The Pup and the Kitten
by StormBlitz
Summary: Rewrite the story of the zodiac and add in one more animal. A wolf who’s most precious companion is the cat banished by its kin. Kyou Sohma has found his wolf in Shinichi Kudo. And their bond begins when they are only a puppy and a kitten.
1. Chapter 1

Kyou had only ever had two best friends. By this stage in his life he could very well claim that he had many good friends, even some pleasant acquaintances. But the sacred title of 'best friend' had only ever been given out to two people, and they were very different from each other.

One was, not surprisingly, Tohru Honda. She had been the first, and so far the only girl to ever see beyond the monster that rested inside of him. At first he had not been very fond of her. She was an outsider, and most outsiders were unable to understand him. Plus, she was a girl, and girls were a completely different species he was unsure how to react around. He had never tried to befriend girls when he was young. His mother had never let him near one, if she ever let him out of the house at all, for fear he could transform. She thought that one might develop some kind of crush on him and try to hug him in order to show their affection. Or worse, they could take off his beads in an innocent attempt to see how the bracelet looked on their delicate wrists. That left him completely unprepared to handle life with Tohru.

He thought she would be like the few girls he **had**ever come into contact with. And if Kagura was any indication of how bad a girl could be, he had no desire to meet anymore. But Tohru was different. She was warm and kind, gentle and patient, caring and loving. She was everything he had never expected in a woman. He had never experienced such tender affection from a girl before, and after dealing with Kagura's special brand of 'love and compassion' for years on end, he had never expected to. It had thrown him off guard. He wasn't used to it. It felt foreign to him and anything foreign was usually bad news. On instinct he pushed her away. He had wanted absolutely nothing to do with her. Looking back on it now he realized how cruel he had been.

But she had been patient with him. She had continued to show him the good in her, he doubted that she had any bad in her to begin with, and waited for him to respond. When he did, he somehow knew that he had reacted the wrong way. Sometimes the look in her eyes would tell him so, or sometimes that damn rat would put in his two cents to ensure that Kyou _knew_ he had made yet _another_mistake. Tohru never minded though. She took his temper in good strides and guided him to where he needed to be when dealing with people. In time he was able to treat her the way she deserved to be treated. Like a tender creature with a kind soul.

He remembered the first time he told her that she was his best friend. She had been so amazed, so honored by his decision, that her face had all but lit on fire. It was almost as if it was he who had picked her and not the other way around. He liked the smile on her face when he told her what such a title meant to him. She told him it made her feel special, so he had mentioned that only one other person had ever been given that title. That just seemed to make her happier, made her seem like she was one of the elite. She was one of the only souls ever to become close to Kyou Sohma.

And yet, she wondered who the other one was. Who was this second individual who held a place in his heart? Did she know them?

Kyou had been feeling awfully good that night, probably because Yuki had fallen ill and was lying miserably in his bed, so he had told her what she wanted to know.

He began at the very beginning, back to a time before his mother had met an unfortunate end. She had never allowed him to go outside. The kids around his neighborhood knew never to approach his house, and no other adults besides Akito ever came to visit. Kyou spent most of his days in his attic looking out at the outside world from the small circular window.

Nothing but the weather ever changed. Day in and day out all the young cat ever saw was the same view of his backyard. Nothing was ever different. Until one day, when the vision of the old backyard he had looked at for years was obstructed. Obstructed by one little boy dressed in a blue jacket over a black shirt and a pair of khaki pants.

Kyou had been surprised at first. His home, he recalled, had basically been in the middle of nowhere. Not even most Sohma's knew the location of the small abode. Akito and Hattori were the only ones who visited regularly enough to know the way, and this boy could never be mistaken for one of them. He was too young, around Kyou's age maybe, to be the head of the Sohma family or the doctor that took care of them. Which left the young zodiac member wondering, who was he?

_He kept his gaze focused on the stranger. The boy on the ground seemed to be looking for something. Something important if the way he was fanatically searching was any indication. But it soon became obvious that whatever he was searching for was nowhere in the area. So with what looked like a disappointed sigh, the boy left on the same path he had used to come in._

Kyou had stared at the backyard for a moment longer, almost opening the window when he thought that the boy _might_ have just turned to look at him, when he heard his mother called for dinner. Without looking back he turned around and made his way downstairs to another cold meeting at the dinner table. But the boy stayed on his mind until he had lost consciousness and had fallen asleep.

The next morning had been the same as most others, and as the day went on Kyou found himself thinking that the day before had just been a dream. Something his lonely mind had concocted to give him some type of hope. There had been no wandering little boy walking in his backyard. Just his own imagination playing cruel tricks on him.

So when he went back to the attic that afternoon he had no hope of seeing anything but the shrubs in his backyard, and by the time he reached out for the doorknob he had already convinced himself that the day before did not matter. He had gotten used to crushing his hopes over the past few years, and by now he considered himself a pro. So he was a little disappointed. He could handle it by now.

But when he looked out the window, like he did every single day, he saw something that he had not expected.

_Young Kyou braced his hands on the window pain, blinking constantly at the figure down on the ground. The figure below, a boy around his age, possessed a gaze that matched the boy's in the attic. He was blinking just as constantly as Kyou was. _

_After a second of constant looking and blinking, the boy held up his hand as a sign of peace. Kyou did the same. Kyou blinked once more and held up his index and middle finger in the form of a peace sign. The boy below copied him. The boy below made a funny face, tugging his cheeks and sticking out his tongue. Kyou laughed before he repeated the action with his face pressed up against the window. _

_The young Sohma momentarily wondered if the two of them were playing some kind of game. Something similar to Simon Says where the two of them took turns being Simon._

_His thoughts were interrupted when the boy outside jumped up and down. Kyou followed the action without another thought, only to accidently fall down in the process. In an effort to keep his dignity Kyou quickly stood up and waved awkwardly to the worried youth. He had every intention of continuing their little game when he suddenly heard the panicked footsteps coming from the stairs._

He would later on swear that his heart had stopped when there was a knock on the door, his mother asking him if he was alright.

_Frantically he had turned his attention back to the window, and tried desperately to send the other boy off. There was no telling what his mother would do if she knew he had been playing, and yes he did consider copying each other playing, with another child. After a few minutes of worried glances the boy down on the ground hurried off before Kyou's mother had a chance to enter the room._

Kyou had been dragged off to bed after a few questions and the routine check of his wrist. His mother had determined that he had hurt himself from the fall in the attic and needed immediate bed rest. She had failed to see the boy running as far away from the house as he could manage.

Kyou should have been satisfied. He had been granted one blessed day of play with another human being, another human being who did not look at him in disgust or mistrust. One day was more than he had ever imagined. He should have just been happy with that. But, just like clockwork, he returned to the attic window the next day the same time as the day before, hoping to see the figure that had interacted with him. And surprisingly, just like the day before, he was given yet another wonderful surprise.

_Kyou could not help the small shriek of surprise that left his mouth at the odd sight before him. Hanging upside down, from the roof directly above his window, was the boy he had seen in his yard yesterday. That same boy, who had played an odd version of Simon Says with the cursed cat, was smiling from his awkward bat like position. Kyou could do nothing more than gape. The boy gently tapped at the window, silently asking for entrance inside. _

Kyou recalled numbly unlocking the old window and pulling it in towards himself.

_The boy then jubilantly flipped over into the attic, landing almost effortlessly inside on rickety floors. A puff of smoke raised up to meet to meet the upper air, and both boys found themselves sneezing at the same time._

_Kyou was left to shyly gaze up at the stranger who was gazing just as shyly back at him. The room was silent. Kyou took that time to look over his new guest. He was right in assuming that this boy was his age. No younger than seven, at the most he was eight. His hair was an almost chocolate brown that must have been painstakingly taken care of to be so neat. Kyou's favorite part was the small portion of it sticking out in the back. The boy's eyes were a bright shimmering blue. Deep and mysterious, yet playful and knowing, like the waves of a large ocean._

_The boy before him was no doubt doing the same as Kyou was. The young Sohma would be the first to admit that his hair, orange as the setting sun's skyline, and his eyes, red as deep as a burning fire, were not hereditary traits you'd seen every day. He wondered if the boy in front of him would think he was strange._

_But instead of scowling, or some other kind of negative response, the boy smiled. "My name's Shinichi, Shinichi Kudo." He said at last. "What's yours?"_

_Kyou had been too stunned to answer for a moment. "Huh?"_

_Shinichi, a nice name Kyou found himself thinking, chuckled a little bit. "Your name, what is it?"_

"_Oh…Oh!" The young boy straightened out. "I'm Kyou Sohma." Awkwardly he stuck out his hand. He was ecstatic when the other accepted it._

_Shinichi then took a look around the attic, blue eyes analyzing everything they caught sight of. "What are you doing up here?"_

"_Huh?" Kyou felt like he was making an idiot out of himself. "I mean, I don't know?" That might have sounded worse than huh._

_But Shinichi continued to smile. It was different from the cold looks he often got from the rest of his family, or the creepy smiles he got from Kagura. This one was gentle, genuine, and pure, just a simple gesture of kindness. It was like nothing Kyou had ever experienced. _

"_Is this your room?"_

_Kyou had the presence of mind to scowl. "No. My room's a floor down. This is the attic."_

"_Then what are you doing up here?"_

_Kyou had no idea how to answer that. "Huh?"_

_Shinichi smiled. "Huh?"_

_It took Kyou a moment to realize that he was being teased. It was different from the taunts he received from others in his family. Those were normally cruel and a jab at his lack of importance in the zodiac. This was light, playful, he kind of liked it._

"_Where are you from Shinichi?"_

"_Beika province. My parents bought a here house to hide from my dad's editor."_

_Kyou blinked. Shigure had one of those. He liked to make her panic and run around the house like a headless chicken. "Is your dad a writer?"_

_Shinichi nodded. "He writes mystery novels." He then jabbed his thumb towards his chest. "I'm a detective."_

"_A detective?" He saw the other nod. "But you're so young."_

_Shinichi's left eye twitched. "That doesn't matter!"_

_Kyou quickly covered his mouth. "Shhh." He listened for the footsteps he was sure would approach. He was relieved when he heard nothing. "We have to be quiet." He whispered once he had Shinichi's attention again. "My mom might hear us."_

_Shinichi frowned. "Why would that be a bad thing?" He whispered softly. "Would you get in trouble for letting me in?" _

"_Uh-huh. She'd get really upset."_

"_Can't you just say I'm a friend from school or something?"_

_As much as Kyou would love to mention that, "I don't have any friends. She'd know I was lying."_

"_No friends?" The frown seemed to deepen. "How come?"_

"_My mom won't let me have any."_

_The frown turned into a scowl. "That's not fair!"_

_Kyou shushed him again. "Shinichi be quiet."_

"_But it's not fair." The brunette said softly. "What kind of mom does that?"_

"_My mom's a bit of a weirdo okay? Let's just leave it at that."_

_Shinichi seemed to want to argue, but something inside him clicked a second later. "My mom's kind of weird too. Only she wants me to have too many friends."_

"_Is your mom a writer too?"_

_That managed to get Shinichi smiling again. "Naw, she'd never like something so _mundane_."_

_Kyou didn't know what mundane meant, but since Shinichi had said it sarcastically, with the use of air quotes, he figured it must have been insulting. "Does she stay at home then?"_

"_Pfft. Momma hates staying home. She thinks it's boring."_

_The young carrot top could not help but think that their mothers were complete opposites. He wondered if the same could be said for the two of them. "Then what is she?"_

"_An actress."_

_That was odd. He didn't seem too thrilled about that. "Is your family rich?"_

_Shinichi seemed uncomfortable with the question. "We're okay." His eyes darted around the room for some kind of distraction. He pointed to the first thing he could see. "What's that?"_

_Kyou blinked at the object in question, and then turned to Shinichi with a teasing grin. "That's a rubber duck."_

_Shinichi's face turned about as red as a tomato. "Shut up!"_

"_No it's okay. Most people have never seen one." He said in a sugary sweet tone. "You're perfectly normal." _

_As an added affect he ran over to grab his old bath toy from the top of the box it resided in. He placed it in his open palm and stuck out his hand for Shinichi's viewing pleasure. _

"_This, my dear Shinichi, is what we like to call a rubber duck. It is a bath toy children bring into the tub to play with. It can come in a number of colors but the favorite seems to be yellow. Beats me why, but my favorite color is red. It happens to float nicely on the surface of water and best of all," He gave the toy a squeeze which produced a small squeak. "It squeaks. This causes most babies to giggle."_

_Sometime during the explanation Shinichi's eye had started to twitch. The motion had only intensified as the impromptu lesson went on. "Anything else you want to say, Kyou Sensei?"_

_Kyou placed his hand over his chin in deep thought. "No that will be all." But his index finger rose in the air as if to imply a command. "But I hoped you paid attention because there will be a pop quiz. If you pass, we'll move on to toy submarines. Yay!"_

_Shinichi just about lost it at the yay portion of the speech. With a good amount of his childhood strength, not all because he didn't want to hurt his new friend, he jumped at Kyou. The rubber duck fell to the floor as the two boys began wrestling amongst old knick knacks and forgotten household items. And yet the soft punches, the held back kicks, the gentle tugs or hair, were not malicious. They were playful, harmless, and just a joke between friends. _

_Kyou had started laughing lightly minutes later. Shinichi had succeeded in pinning him down to the floor, hands firmly, but gently, grasping Kyou's wrists on either side of his head. The young detective sat triumphantly over his spot on the young Sohma's hips, and Kyou could not bring himself to mind the defeat he had suffered. Both were panting with tired smiles, each holding the happy gaze of the other._

_Little Kyou found himself admiring those fine blue eyes, those shimmering iris's that stared at him with such kindness and acceptance. That smile, that twinkle, that happiness aimed solely on him, it was all to good to be true. _

"_I like your eyes." He said at last. "They're pretty." _

_Shinichi's cheeks went rosy, and for a second Kyou thought he did something wrong. But Shinichi brought his face closer to Kyou's, breaths of the two children intermingling, as two opposite set of eyes never wavered from the other. _

"_I like yours too." The brunette admitted. "They're…" He seemed hesitant to finish. "Beautiful."_

"_Really? You're not afraid of them?"_

_Shinichi blinked. The other had obviously said something that confused him. "What do you mean?"_

"_They're red. Most people think of fire when they see them." Fire to most people was bad, and a lot of people he came into contact with would shy away from him because of his eyes._

_Shinichi only came closer. "Fire can be beautiful too. The trick is to not try to control it. Just work with it and you'll be fine."_

"_Are you going to work with me?"_

_Shinichi nodded."For as long as you'll let me."_

By this point in the story Tohru had started yawning, and it took a moment to realize that the tale had taken hours to recant. Kyou had never meant to speak for that long and he was surprised his friend had not shut him up earlier. As if she ever would.

He sent the girl off to bed, telling her it was late and the two of them had school in the morning. He promised he would tell her the rest of the story later when they had the time and stamina to stay awake through it all. Tohru seemed excited with the idea that he had more of the story to tell, and he spent the better half of the trip to her room (he needed to make sure she didn't collapse of exhaustion on her way there) listening to her openly wonder how much more there was to be heard.

Smiling, the zodiac cat mentioned that he had quite the list of fond memories to narrate. Two years worth of childhood stories, and he would tell them to her all in the morning.

After all it was only fair he tell his latest best friend about the first and most precious person that had ever walked into his life.

* * *

**AN: I've been thinking about this pairing for a while now. It's a mix of one of my favorite anime guys, and one of Mistress's. I happen to think it turned out rather nicely, since I believe it to the first of it's kind, so I didn't have very much to study from. Well, tell me what you think. **


	2. Chapter 2

_Kyou watched in childlike fascination as Shinichi took out two odd looking black velvet boxes from his pocket. It was odd because those kinds of boxes usually had jewelry inside of them, these looked to either hold necklaces or bracelets, and things as precious as jewels were most commonly given as gifts to loved ones. Was Shinichi going to give him one? If so, what was the other one for? _

"_Here" The brunette passed over the longer shaped box to the curious cat. "That one's for you."_

_Kyou wanted to open it, to see what wonderful gift his friend had given him, but there was still something that confused him. "What's that?" He asked, pointing to the box the young detective still had in his hand. _

_Shinichi looked faintly amused by the question. "This my friend is a type of box-"_

"_I know that much!" Kyou pouted. "Whose it for?"_

"_Oh." The young detective swiftly opened the parcel he had kept for himself, turning it slightly so that Kyou could see what was inside. To the boy's surprise it was a bracelet, one that was very much like his own, made completely out of marble beads. The only difference was that instead of red and orange, the color scheme was blue and black. And right in the center of Shinichi's was a bead with an orange cat head carved into the marble._

_It left the young Sohma speechless. "What--how--_why_?"_

_Shinichi just smiled. "I thought it was unfair that you were the only one in your family who had to wear a bracelet all the time. So I decided to get one too. I won't take mine off unless you do."_

_Kyou felt oddly touched by this. "Why is there a cat on it?"_

_Shinichi laughed nervously while scratching the back of his head. "It's for you." Seeing the question spreading across the others face he quickly added, "So that every time I see it I think of you. That way, even if something happens, all I have to do is look at the cat and I won't want to take it off."_

_Kyou didn't know what he meant by '_something' _but he forced it to the back of his mind for the moment. Right now there was a present in his hand waiting to be opened, and he could not remember the last time he had gotten a gift from someone who had actually been **willing** to get it for him._

_He took his time, savoring the moment to carefully reveal what was inside. A small part of his brain noted that Shinichi's breath hitched a little bit, but whether in anticipation or alarm Kyou didn't know. A good portion of his attention was too focused on what actually inside the velvet case._

_He wanted to cry. He knew it was extremely girlie, he would probably get teased if anyone ever found out, and this made him lose all former pretense of manly, but he couldn't bring himself to care. Because staring back at him from its silky white bedding was a sterling silver necklace with a wolf charm on the chain. The animal was sitting up with its head turned towards Kyou, eyes a shimmering blue, looking kindly upon the child staring back at it. _

_It was beautiful. "A wolf?"_

_Shinichi nodded nervously. "You said I reminded you of one."_

_Kyou nodded absentmindedly. "Because you're so loyal and strong." He didn't notice the blush that appeared on the others face. "And you protect me like a wolf does for its friends."_

_Bashfully the brunette agreed. "I thought this one could protect you when I'm not around. Just in case."_

_Kyou threw himself at the other boy without warning, holding on as tightly as he could to his best friend's body without causing any pain. His hold became a bit more desperate when Shinichi wrapped his arms just as tightly around him. Kyou didn't care that this probably seemed wrong to most people. He didn't care that this was possibly more intimate than he could ever hope to understand. He didn't care that this might have meant more to the two of them than they even realized. Right then he just knew he needed to try and make the brunette understand just how much this meant to him. He wanted Shinichi to realize how _good_ he had just made him feel. He wanted so badly to convey that, he __**needed **__so __**desperately**__ to convey that._

"_Thank you." He whispered urgently. "Thank you, thank you, thank you, _thank you_."_

_Shinichi pulled the young Sohma closer to him. "I mean it." He said honestly. "I really mean it. I'll always be there to protect you." He brought his face close to Kyou's ear and whispered, "Always."_

* * *

"Aww." Tohru cooed at the now cherry faced Kyou. "That was so sweet." She giggled when she saw said Sohma try to focus on anything but her smiling face. Unfortunately the path to school did not offer him much material. "So what happened next?"

Kyou had to take a second to gather his thoughts. "Well, he put the necklace on my neck, and I put the bracelet on his wrist. Then we stayed in the attic for a few more hours before he went home."

Tohru giggled again. "It sounds like you two exchanged wedding rings."

Kyou's face turned a blinding red before he started sputtering. "Shut up! It wasn't like that!" He said, despite the fact that at the time he had been thinking the exact same thing. But he was seven! What did he know back then?

"Do you two still talk to each other?"

Before Kyou could answer there was a snort from somewhere off to his right. Instant recognition kicking in, he sent a glare to the rat beside him. Yuki looked back at him with a bland stare.

"_That boy_ stopped contacting the stupid cat about a year ago."

Kyou wanted to snarl. The hell did he know about it?

But Tohru gasped slightly, and got this sad look on her face, so Kyou knew he had some damage control to do. "It's not like he just up and forgot about me." He tied to explain. "It's just that around that time he started getting really famous for his detective work, and getting more and more top secret clients that demanded absolute silence, and then he got caught up in this really dangerous case which required all his attention, and I'm sure he just never got around to it."

Tohru would believe him. She was always the type to give people the benefit of the doubt. And just like clockwork she gave her babbling best friend an encouraging smile, somehow settling the nerves he had not realized had been worked up. "I bet he misses you."

"I hope so." Kyou admitted quietly. "I miss him."

A thought suddenly occurred to the brunette. "Did Shinichi-Kun know about the zodiac curse?"

Kyou couldn't stop himself from smiling. It amazed him how easily this girl was able to make him happy again with one simple question. "He did. He even knew about my curse."

"Really?! How did he find out?"

"Interesting story actually. It was rai--" Kyou suddenly found himself face to…well, back, with the person in front of him. It seemed he had not been paying attention to where he was going, and had accidently bumped into someone. "The hell?" In his defense the guy really should not have just been standing there. "What's with the hold up?" He noticed that a group of people had gathered around to see something wedged in the center of the road, right in the middle of their quickest route to school.

The man he had bumped into turned to spare a quick glance at the irritated Kyou. "You kids heading off to school?"

Before the red head could start angrily demanding his question be answered, his cousin nodded politely and said, "Yes sir we are."

"I'd take a different path if I were you."

Tohru frowned. "Why?"

The man jabbed a thumb towards the middle of the circle. "A murder just took place. They found the bodies this morning."

Tohru gasped and the Sohma cousins found their eyes widening. "Who?" She dared to ask.

The man did not look like he wanted to answer. He must have thought the three of them would know the victims. "Have any of you ever been to that small café called 'Home Sweet Home'?"

The three nodded slowly, but Kyou was the only one who spoke. "The old couple who owns the place have been family friends since we were little. We're always stopping by."

Tohru nodded. "Their grandson and granddaughter go to school with us."

The man frowned. "I'm afraid you won't be seeing those two ever again."

The three stiffened instantly, and it only took a second for the three of them to start pushing through the crowd to see what had happened. Kyou was at the front, Yuki not too far behind, pushing and shoving his way through dozens of people who seemed unwilling to _move_. They seemed more concerned with keeping him at bay. Most probably thought this would be too much for him to handle, and he would be better off not knowing the full extent of the situation. On more than one occasion the martial artist had to forcibly remove a person from his path (what kind of sick jerk takes pictures of something like this?) and force his way to the front of the circle (and whoever had called him that particularly demeaning name was going to pay for it later).

But, to his utter annoyance, the second he finally made it to the front of the circle, someone clamped a hand over his eyes. Honestly, what was with people today? Did he look like he was five years old?

"You don't want to see this." A male voice assured. "Turn back around and just go home."

The voice was young. The person it belonged to couldn't have been older than seventeen, and instead of calming Kyou down it only fueled his irritation. It was one thing for an adult to try and order him around, but one of his peers? Someone his own age? Oh no.

With an angry growl he lifted his left hand to rip off the appendage covering his eyes. He had every intention of chewing out the kid it belonged to, until his eyes caught sight of something oddly familiar. He realized that his left hand, wrist was covered by red and orange beads, was clasping onto the right hand of the other boy, whose wrist was covered by marble black and blue beads, an orange cat carved into the center of the one set in the middle.

He raised his head, and soon his eyes slowly came to rest on pure bright shimmering blue eyes. Deep and mysterious, just like the waves of a large ocean.

Kyou felt his breath falter, and he could see the others eyes widen in recognition. The Sohma's grip loosened, but the boy in front of him quickly reconnected their hands. The beads rubbed against each other innocently. Almost as if the two pieces of jewelry knew each other, missed each other, were happy to see each other.

Kyou's mouth opened and closed several times. He had much he wanted to say, but nothing would come out of his mouth at the moment. He was spared, though, the trouble of doing any such thing. The other quickly brought the red head into his arms and proceeded to hold him as firmly as he could. Kyou returned the action tenfold.

After a short second Kyou felt warm breath on his ear. "Kyou?"

Kyou felt as though he might start crying. "Shinichi?"

The hug became tighter. The recognition, the happiness, the joy of reuniting, it was all there. All of it was represented in that one sweet moment of intense intimacy.

"What are you doing you stupid cat?" And just like that the moment was ruined by Yuki's outraged voice.

Kyou was suddenly aware of where he was and who was around him. Instinct, more than anything, caused him to quickly shove away the boy he had clasped onto. He sputtered indigently and attempted to curse at the rat who had ruined his moment, but found he could not look at the other boy next to him. He would be tempted to make a grab for him again, and this was neither the time nor the place for such a thing.

Yuki simply ignored him, opting instead to glare at the brunette staring back at him with a cold eye. "And who are you?"

The boy smirked at him. "It's been a while eh, Yuki-Hime?"

For the first time in a long while, perhaps the first time that year, Yuki's eye _twitched_. A sign of utter irritation, and a sign that Shinichi had done what many had been unable to do in such a short timeframe. He had managed to get under Yuki's skin. "You're that bastard wolf." The high school prince had almost growled out, which only made Shinichi smile wider.

The sudden tension in the air was not lost to a very concerned Tohru, who looked from one boy to the other with a worried look in her eyes. "Um…"

Shinichi seemed somewhat startled at the new voice, almost like he had not realized there had been another human being there. "Oh, I'm sorry. How rude of me. Who are you?"

She smiled slightly before shyly reaching out her hand. "I'm Tohru Honda. Kyou's friend."

At the simple mention of the name, bright blue eyes lit up. He grasped her hand eagerly. "Shinichi Kudo. Nice to meet you."

"Same."

There was warmth in her voice, a soft glimmer Kyou noticed, aimed at boy whose hand held hers in a soft grasp. She liked him. Whether it was because of Kyou's countless praise, or Shinichi's own personal charm, the cat was unaware of. The point was that she liked him. That alone was enough to bring his eyes back up to the pair who had singlehandedly changed his life. And he was able to see that Shinichi liked her too.

She turned to him, a smile on her face as well as in her eyes, and for a second he thought he saw a bit of mischief. He blinked for a second before quickly brushing it off. Tohru mischievous? Ha! Next thing you knew Shigure would suddenly want to become a priest.

"So he's the one you proposed to?"

And maybe the thought wasn't so ridiculous after all. Cherry faced and still unable to approach the situation calmly, he stuttered. "I told you it wasn't like that!"

All Shinichi could do was laugh. And even though the situation was mortifying, Kyou found it a little easier to deal with when he saw that smile. That same sweet smile that had once told him how beautiful his differences were was his to look at once more. He would forgive Tohru for this. Just this once.

* * *

**AN: Thank you to those of you that reviewed. They are always greatly appreciated. I must admit this chapter is a tad bit longer than I expected, and I'm afraid it makes the reunion seem a bit rushed. Oh well, I never was patient person. **


	3. Chapter 3

"Would somebody please explain to me what on Earth is going on here?"

Shinichi gave Yuki a bland look. "Did the two covered up bloody bodies not give you enough of a hint?"

Yuki threw back that same expression. "So, I see dead bodies are still following you around like a lovesick puppy. You would think that you'd grow out of that by now."

"And you would think you'd start looking more like a man by the end of high school. Life's funny that way."

"Anyway!" Kyo interrupted swiftly. If he did not intervene, there would no doubt be an escalating feat of violence. The last thing he needed was a fistfight to occur right in front of Tohru. And if Yuki laid a hand on Shinichi, there would be hell to pay. "Just what happened here Shinichi?"

"A double murder." The detective answered solemnly. "A brother and a sister known as Komine and Sensui Taganashi."

"I know that much." Kyo interjected softly. "They were classmates of mine."

Shinichi looked almost guilty. "I'm sorry to hear that."

Kyo stored away that apology for a later time. Shinichi had a bad habit of blaming himself for the deaths of the people he came across. He used to say it was some kind of curse, that death followed him around so much because he was destined to always make people perish before his eyes. The opinion had apparently stemmed from Yuki when they had all been kids. The rat was always teasing Shinichi about how often he ran into murder cases, and how it must have been his fault. Death didn't follow just _anyone_, after all.

Kyo had done much to ensure that the detective never had time to believe in such taunts. His efforts had worked back then, but someone had obviously brought up that line of thinking once more. It looked like Kyo would have to start dismantling those thoughts all over again.

For now he would do what he could to get Shinichi out of there as fast as possible. He had learned from experience that it was often better to remove oneself from a painful scene of than it was to try and understand the meanings behind it. "Don't worry about it. Have you figured out who the murderer is yet?"

"Yes." Shinichi motioned to the open door of the bakery where several officers rushed to and from in a frenzied hurry. "The local police are in there now reading the man his rights."

Kyo had to raise an eyebrow. "You don't seem so excited."

Shinichi smiled nervously, and the look in his eyes when he turned to Kyo was nearly heartbreaking. "This wasn't what I had in mind when I took the trip down here."

The redhead tried to smile back, tried to make himself look as reassuring as possible. Tohru said that small things like that were often the best ways to comfort someone who seemed low in spirits. "What, your idea of a good time doesn't include dead bodies? Who are you, and what have you done with my best friend?"

The joke earned him a small laugh and a playful punch in the arm. "I was supposed to be here on vacation." Shinichi explained to Kyo. "But as you can see,"

Death never took a holiday, and, unfortunately, it wanted to see to it that its favorite detective never did either. "You were sidetracked." The redhead shrugged. "It happens."

"Only to him," Yuki muttered under his breath.

To which Shinichi responded. "Hey Yuki, anyone asked you out to the prom yet? I'd love to go with you to help pick out your dress."

It took the combined efforts of both Tohru and Kyo to keep the two separated this time. Yuki looked ready to take a swing at the detective and Shinichi's leg was beginning to twitch with the silent threat of a painful movement. It was only Yuki's fear of hurting Tohru, and Shinichi's refusal to risk Kyo getting caught in a crossfire, that made them settle themselves down and simply glare at the other.

The cat had almost forgotten how volatile the atmosphere between the two of them could get. As far back as Kyo could remember, the two had never gotten along very well. In fact it had been WWIII the second they first laid eyes on each other. Yuki thought Shinichi was an unwanted outsider and Shinichi was of the opinion that the rat was an abomination to creation. It was common knowledge by now that the two should never be in too close a proximity to the other, lest a long bloody battle be issued out. It had happened once. Shinichi walked away with a bloody nose that was lucky enough not to be broken and Yuki ended up with a nasty looking black eye that did not begin to fade for weeks.

"Anyway," Shinichi refocused his attention on Kyo. "I was just wrapping things up here before I headed out to try and find a hotel." He sighed. "Though, after this morning, I think I'm going to need a walk to clear my head."

"Good idea. I'll go with you." Kyo ignored what sounded like the beginnings of a complaint from the rat behind him. "You shouldn't be alone right now." That, and Kyo was unwilling to leave the boy's side. He had not seen Shinichi in years, and had had no contact with him since the year before. It was about time the two caught up, his mind whispered to him desperately. It was obvious that something deep within him wanted to spend a bit of alone time with a detective he had adored since his childhood.

Shinichi looked almost relieved. If Kyo wasn't reading the signals incorrectly, that meant he had wanted the same thing to transpire. Had that walk been some sort of subtle invitation? The detective wasn't always known for saying what he meant, so the idea might have been said nonchalantly to give the cat an opportunity to refuse. As if he ever would.

"We do have school, you stupid cat." He heard Yuki say. "You can't just not show up."

"Sure I can." And he most certainly would. He turned to Tohru calmly, resisting the urge to go odd on a tangent about his cousin. "I know you don't like lying to people, but, do you think you could make up an excuse for me? Just this once? I promise I'll pay you back for it."

She would not make him do any such thing. That smile on her face let him know that much. She was too good to him sometimes. "I'll tell the teachers you had something important to do, and I'll take notes so you won't miss out on anything important." She saluted him. "You can count on me."

He could not help but laugh.

* * *

They had spent the better half of three hours simply walking around aimlessly, relishing in the comfortable silence that surrounded them. It was funny, how the two of them could feel so at ease with each other after so long. How they could say nothing at all yet still smile and laugh as though they were taking part in the conversation of the century. None of it was awkward. None of it was even remotely forced. It simply was, and it was one of the most amazing things Kyo had ever experienced.

"So, what have you been up to?" Kyo asked once the two of them had taken a seat on a nearby bench. "It's been quite a while, hasn't it?"

"It has." Shinichi stretched himself out before relaxing into the wooden seat he now rested on. "One year without written correspondence, two years without phone calls, and about ten years since we've seen each other face to face." He smiled at the cat. "It's been way too long."

Kyo smiled back. It was far too easy to do so when the brunette was around. "I missed you."

"I missed you too."

For anyone else, for any other situation, those words would have been mortifying. The cat did not handle mushy situations, like that, very well. Anger he could do. Sadness he could kind of handle. Emotional exchanges like the one he had just partaken in? It wasn't likely to happen. Kyo Sohma was a proud socially awkward loner who did a lot better at avoiding the situation than trying to make himself comfortable inside of it. With Shinichi it was different. Then again, everything was when it involved the detective. Shinichi himself was different to begin with.

He was the boy who had appeared out of nowhere. The child who had been befriended a shy, quiet, cursed boy who always played in his attic, yearning but never daring to venture outside into the world he had barely experienced. The cursed child who wanted more than anything to just find someone to play with. Someone who wouldn't flinch every time they came near him.

The redhead had, by the time he was eight, put aside those childish dreams in favor of the harsher reality. He was destined to always be alone. It wasn't a fun realization, but it had been one he needed to make in order to survive. Truly, it was the one thing he needed to know as fact lest he wanted his heart broken.

Then came a little boy dressed in blue, one with an obsession for mystery, who had been drawn into the fire that was Kyo Sohma. Anyone else would have run away in fear. Shinichi only drew closer in fascination.

It was incredible in ways that could not be described.

"Sorry we had to meet like this." The redhead said apologetically. "Murder's never fun when you're trying to enjoy a vacation."

"Actually, I have a small confession to make." The detective scratched the back of his head. It was a quirk of his. One he was fond of utilizing when he was feeling particularly bashful about something. Kyo had seen it dozens of times when they were kids. "This isn't exactly a pleasure trip."

"A business trip then?"

Shinichi shook his head, and then set blue eyes on the boy next to him. Kyo wondered if there would ever be a time when he would tire of looking at that remarkable gaze. Even after having not seen it for so long, it was still enough to leave him breathless. "I came here for you." He looked at the black and blue beads surrounding his wrist. "I wanted to find you, I mean."

Kyo did not try to stop the flush that appeared over his face. It wouldn't work, and Shinichi had no doubt already seen it. "Oh really? Why after so long?" The question was not harsh, though coming from Kyo it probably sounded that way. He wasn't mad, not really, not in all honesty. Just curious.

Shinichi understood. "Something happened a little while ago. Something so chaotic it all but shattered my life. For the past three years I struggled to turn chaos into order so I could finally get back home. Unfortunately, because of all this, I slowly lost touch with just about everyone I was close to. You included."

So the cat hadn't been singled out? "Sounds hectic."

"It was." The detective sighed. "You wouldn't believe how mad it made me, having to push away everything until matters sorted themselves out. Then, when I finally had a chance to reconnect with everyone, the first person on my list was nowhere to be found."

Kyo blinked. He pointed to himself, head slightly tilted and eyes narrowed in confusion.

The other smiled and nodded. "Yeah you. You had relocated completely. No one knew where you were. Or, nobody would tell me where you went off to. All they said was that you'd left the mountains and had found some people to live with." He ran a hand through his hair. "No specifics of course. I swear your entire family is against me."

"Not all of them." The redhead assured. "Just some."

"As a last resort I thought about the one person in your family who would be willing to give me a piece of information, even if did cost me my dignity. Shigure was the only one who fit the criteria."

"_Shigure_ was the first person you thought of?"

"It was either him or Kagura, and we both know how she feels about me."

She despised him, almost as much and Yuki did. Though, her hate was a bit more understandable. Her precious fiancé was often times more preoccupied with the 'outsider' than her. When they had been boys, after Shinichi had learned the shameful secret of the Sohma Zodiac members, the detective had come up with dozens of ways to keep the boar at bay when he and his best friend were playing. His favorite trick had always been to let her get close enough to Kyo to hug him, only to intercept the embrace and turn her into the little pig destiny dictated her to be. Then both boys would run as far as they could before she turned back to her human form. It was a fairly dangerous move, but Shinichi always managed to pull it off with little trouble. Kagura hated him for it. Kyo adored him that much more for it.

"Low and behold," The brunette said after a short pause. "I find you here."

"Congratulations. You get a cookie."

At the mere mention of food, Shinichi's stomach began to growl. Red faced and embarrassed, he looked away to a very interesting spot on the ground. "You wouldn't happen to actually have a cookie, would you?"

Kyo narrowed his eyes. "Did you forget to eat _again_? What have I told you about doing that?"

"I think I have a pretty good excuse!" Shinichi defended. "Two dead bodies and a reunion are awfully acceptable distractions in my opinion."

The boy got a slap to the back of his head for his efforts. "Idiot." Kyo rose from the bench, dusted himself off, and motioned for Shinichi to do the same. "Come on."

"Where are we going?"

"To get something substantial in you. I know a good place."

* * *

Shigure was surprised to hear the opening of the front door so early in the day. The three teenagers that lived with him could not have been home so soon. School had not even been in session for very long, not nearly enough time for the final bell to have rung at any rate. Though, he thought to himself as he put down his pen on his desk, a few hours time was long enough for the short tempered to get aggravated even to leave.

"Kyo?" The dog called as he ventured out into the hallway. "Get tired of school already?" He blinked when he came to the front door. Not only was Kyo there, grumpily taking off his shoes, but so was a familiar visitor who only laughed at the redhead's sour attitude. "Well I'll be." He said a moment later, eyes now twinkling in recognition. "Is that Shinichi Kudo standing in my doorway?"

The boys stepped closer to the writer and Shinichi bowed. "Nice to see you again, Sohma- San."

"Now, now, Shinichi, we remember what I told you about using that name correct?"

Kyo snorted, nudging his friend in the shoulder. "It makes him feel like the old pervert he is."

Shinichi hid his laugh behind his hand. "Ah, my apologies Shigure."

Shigure pouted. "Still polite as ever I see. Meanwhile Kyo remains as cruel as he's always been." He dramatically placed a hand over his heart. "And after I took him into my own home, despite the challenges I knew it would present. Yes it was a hard decision to make, but I knew I couldn't leave him out on the streets to suffer-"

"Yeah, yeah, woe is you. Can you move now?" The cat pushed his cousin out of the way, proceeding to the kitchen with Shinichi following close behind. "I need to feed him."

Shigure blinked. No screaming, no cursing, no mentions of how full of it he was? That was something new.

The writer walked into the kitchen, intent on asking if the cat was sick, just in time to see Kyo take out a plate of leftovers from last night's dinner, beef stew and a side of white rice. It was Yuki's portion, Shigure recalled. The rat had not been feeling well that evening and had opted to save what Tohru had served for when he got home from school the next day. Yet, it didn't look like he was going to get the chance to eat it. Kyo was currently heating it up and setting out some utensils so that Shinichi could devour it first.

"You do know that's Yuki's, don't you?"

Kyo snorted again, and Shinichi merely smirked. "Oh? Is the little princess going to start crying over some lost food?"

Kyo shrugged. "He shouldn't eat it anyway. Needs to watch that figure if he's going to fit into that dress for prom."

The two snickered and Kyo set the plate in front of the other when it was warm enough. Shinichi dug in as though there would not be hell to pay for it later.

Shigure just shook his head. When one was around, Yuki was in for a headache. When the two of them were together, the poor boy was going to be in a putrid hell. "You two haven't changed a bit."

Both smiled. They obviously considered that a compliment.

"I see you still have some underlying issues with Yuki, Shinichi."

The detective rolled his eyes. "He's the one who has a problem with me. He has ever since we were kids."

"It's funny," Shigure said, leaning against a kitchen wall. "I can't seem to remember when it became Wolf vs. Rat instead of just Rat vs. Cat. Wasn't there even a second where you two got along?"

"No." Kyo answered for his friend, who was still enjoying the finer points of heated leftovers. "Damn rat hasn't liked him since day one."

"When was that exactly?"

Kyo couldn't stop the smile that appeared on his face. "My ninth birthday party. It was the only one I had ever been thrown." He turned to Shinichi. "Do you remember that?"

Shinichi wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, nodding as he set the now empty plate down. "Like it was yesterday. That was the first time your family had ever voluntarily tolerated my presence. It was right before the cake was brought out. Yuki-hime managed to find us right before we got to the table…"

* * *

"_He looks weird." Eight year old Yuki said as he gazed at Shinichi for the first time. _

_Said detective simply glared in response. His feline best friend, however, bristled at the mere implication of an insult aimed at Shinichi. _

"_He does not!" He whined like an impudent little brat. "He's smart, handsome, funny, a really good soccer player, and a brilliant detective!" For added immaturity he stuck out his tongue. "You're just jealous."_

_Yuki huffed and crossed his arms in disgust. "Yeah right. Why don't you get your head out of the clouds and think for a change, you stupid cat?"_

_Shinichi narrowed his eyes. "Why does this girl feel the need to pick on you?"_

_Yuki quickly turned his head back towards the young detective. "I'm a boy!"_

_Shinichi shook his head. "You're thin, feminine, have no sense of body muscle whatsoever, and you're wearing a kimono."He said condescendingly. "In fact you look more like a princess than a-" He paused for a moment before turning to Kyo. "What is he supposed to be exactly?"_

"_That's Yuki. He's supposed to be the rat of the zodiac."_

_Shinichi nodded. "That explains it then."He shifted dagger eyes to the boy. "You're a dirty little rat princess."_

_Yuki made to take a swing at the soccer child, but an arm around his neck halted his attempt. The three looked up to see a smiling Shigure, accompanied by a collected Hatori, gently trying to keep a fight from breaking out._

"_Now, why all this commotion on such a lovely day, hmm?" Shigure took note of the looks on three small faces. Angry Yuki, annoyed Shinichi, and vengeful Kyo. Not the best way to start a party. "Isn't his supposed to be a day of happy times and wonderful memories?"_

_Kyo pouted. "It was." He glared at a still restrained Yuki. "Until he decided to show up."_

"_Now, Kyo that's not very nice." Shigure said as gently as he could. "You two are cousins. You need to learn to get along better."_

"_He started it!"_

_Yuki turned his head. "All I did was make an observation."_

"_You insulted Shinichi."_

_Hattori sighed. "Yuki, that was not a very polite thing to do."_

_Yuki huffed again. "He shouldn't even be here."_

"_That may be, but its Kyo's birthday party, and it was his choice who he wanted to bring as a special guest. He chose Shinichi."_

_The doctor continued to softly scold the young rat while Shigure reassured the boy all would be well. During that time the birthday boy managed to slip away with his best friend without the other three noticing their vanishing act. _

"_Who is he?"Shinichi asked once the two of them were out of earshot. He periodically looked behind him, glaring as though a mean face could ward of any unwanted company. _

"_He basically is a rat princess." Kyo caught sight of a low stone wall sitting near a small fish pond. They were tropical fish, if he wasn't mistaken, and for a moment he marveled at how huge they were. Could they get that big in real life? They must have been expensive. "Everyone thinks of him as some special prince of the family." He took a seat on the little wall._

_Shinichi followed his lead. "Is that because of the story?"_

_Kyo nodded. His eyes followed a set of fish swimming around each other in what seemed like a perfect circle. "The rat was the first to cross the finish line, meaning he was the best of the best. Anyone with that zodiac sign is treated like a winner."_

_Shinichi frowned. "I don't think that way."_

"_You're biased." The child said sadly. "If you had been Yuki's friend before mine, you would think the way everybody else does."That hurt to say, hurt to admit. Shinichi was the best thing that had ever happened to the cat. Yet, he knew that that may have not been the case for Shinichi. Kyo may have very well been the worst thing the boy had ever come across. _

"_The rat cheated."_

_Startled, Kyo looked to the serious face of the boy sitting next to him. "Huh?"_

"_The rat cheated throughout that entire race. He tricked the cat into not coming so he wouldn't have as much competition, and then he tricked the ox into carrying him so he wouldn't have to work as hard." Shinichi looked down angrily. "I would never like someone like that. Even if I had met Yuki first, I wouldn't be able to accept the rat. I'd just run off and find the ones he mistreated so that I could somehow make it right." He looked back to Kyo determinedly. "I would still find my way to you and end up your best friend!"_

_The area became silent. Shinichi was red faced and breathing just ever so harder than he normally did. Kyo could only stare at the small detective in shock. Without thinking he crushed the other to him and clasped onto the hand that was circled with blue and black marble beads. Shinichi returned the gestures tenfold. _

"_I mean it." The brunette said softly. "You know I do."_

_Kyo nodded. "I know." The boy had never lied to him before. This time was no different. "I don't think I'll ever be able to thank you enough."_

"_What for?"_

_The redhead laughed slightly. "This is all because of you, you know. I never had a birthday party before."_

_Shinichi pulled back slightly. "Never?"_

_Kyo shook his head. "I'm the cursed member of this family. No one wants to throw a party for a monster. The only reason they're being so nice this time is because they want to make a decent impression on you. That's why they went out to actually buy me gifts and rented this place out for the party. It would look bad on them if they acted the way they normally did in front of a guest. If they act this way for now, they can go home later and pretend like they did their good deed for the day." Still, he smiled. "But that's okay. I'm happy they let me bring you today, and I'm glad we'll be able to have a good time, even if it's not because that's really the reason for people being so nice."_

_Shinichi tightened the hold on Kyo's hand. His best friend did not deserve this. _

"_What are you two doing?"_

_Kyo barely had the sense of mind to look for the voice. When he located the owner, he almost wished he had stayed in la la land where he and Shinichi were the only ones present. "What do you want, rat?"_

_Said boy glared at the brunette holding his cousins hand. He looked like he wanted to comment. Instead all he said was, "Cake is ready."_

_Kyo sighed and jumped down from his perch on the wall, taking Shinichi with him. As they passed Yuki bye, Shinichi tightened his hold on the cat's hand and blew a raspberry at the rat._

...

"…_Happy Birthday dear Kyo~" The group sang out moments later. "Happy Birthday to you~"_

_Those around the table clapped as the redhead blew out his candles. A camera was then held up to the birthday boy as a smiling Shigure Sohma focused the lens on the child and his cake. "Smile."_

_Kyo blinked. He then reached over to the right side of the table and pulled over his shocked best friend. "Take a picture with me Shinichi." _

_The detective and cat wrapped their arms around each other. They sent the older Sohma matching grins that did not disappear even after the flash had gone off. Those grins only widened when they were handed their pieces of cake. Kyo's was the biggest of the bunch and had a large fan with his name written in Kanji. Shinichi's was second biggest, and his had a small cat with its paw up in the air. _

_Kyo was happy when he tasted fresh strawberries within the large pastry. Strawberry was Shinichi's favorite, and Kyo wanted everything to be perfect for the detective's first visit to a Sohma birthday party. He had meant what he said earlier about the reason for his relatives supposed kindness. It was forced, from most of them anyway, but it meant they would behave in front of their guest. This was good news because he wanted to impress the detective as much as he could. _

"_Time for presents!" Shigure gingerly brought over boxes of beautifully wrapped parcels in all sorts of sizes. Some were as tiny as the palm of his hand, some as big as his head._

_Kyo tore through most of them in a flash. Kisa and Hiro had given him a card each. Inside both saved up enough to give him ten dollars collectively. He would find good use for that money when he and Shinichi went to the amusement park next week. The trip was a gift from Shinichi's mother to Kyo. He found it oddly nice that his friend's mother had seen fit to get him something as well, and the small outing would be much appreciated. Ayame had made him and Shinichi miniature detective outfits. They were, of course, modeled after Shinichi's favorite detective and his assistant, Holmes and Watson. Hatori had given him a set of books, ones he had expressed interest in when Shinichi mentioned his father had yet to include them in his library's collection. The two shouted in victory when they realized they would able to brag about it to the older Kudo. Shigure had surprised him with his gift. A promise to take the two with him the next time he traveled to America for a 'vacation' from his editor, all expenses paid. Kyo, seeing the opportunity to test out the bit of English Shinichi had taught him, was very excited. _

_Kyo had gotten quite a few more gifts, but none of them were marked with a name. Shinichi found it odd, but Kyo knew they probably wanted to deny the day ever happened. Not having their name on a gift would only work in their favor in the future. Still, he got free gifts and that was enough for him. There were gift cards, games, CD's, and toys. One he found particularly amusing was a stuffed fish with rainbow shimmering scales. It might have been meant to make fun of him, but it just looked so funny and cool that he found himself smiling at it. He spent the better half of the next hour chasing Shinichi around with it. _

_Later it was time for everyone to depart. Kyo would be going home with Shinichi for a week at his house. Shinichi was still being homeschooled for that year, and Yusaku said that if the boy didn't mind he could sit in on the lessons. Then Shinichi was his for the rest of the day. It was the elder Kudo's birthday gift to the young Sohma who his son had grown so attached to. _

_Yuki was one of the last to depart. Before he left, he swallowed harshly and stood before the birthday boy. Kyo was ready to start an argument, but was stunned into silence when Yuki said, nervously,_

"_Happy Birthday Kyo."_

_The redhead blinked repeatedly. Yuki __**never**__ called him by name. __**Ever**__. This was…very unusual and oddly good to hear._

_The moment was spoiled when he turned to Shinichi, glared, and said very harshly, "Bastard wolf."_

* * *

"He did not say that."

"Oh yes he did." Shinichi seriously insisted to the older Sohma. "Little brat ran away before I could get enough bearings to slap him."

Kyo ran a hand through his hair. "I didn't even know he could swear at the time."

"He probably didn't even know what it meant! He just wanted to sound like he could beat me in a match of insults." The detective folded his arms and very nearly pouted. "He just always **had **to be smarter than me."

Kyo leaned into the brunette slightly, a gesture that seemed to calm him down. "He's not. Trust me. I doubt he could even imagine half the things you're capable of doing."

That made the detective smile. "You're good for my ego."

"And you're good for my sanity."

Shigure shook his head and smiled. Things were bound to get fairly interesting very soon. If past experiences were anything to go by….

He blinked, and then slowly started becoming worried. If past experiences were anything to go by, his house was mere moments away from being torn to tiny non repairable pieces. And then chaos would suddenly reign in his life until he was little more than a sobbing mess on the ground. And if he was lucky, the dead would show up to give him a well deserved break. If he was unlucky, the dead would multiply until they became another issue entirely.

"I'm going to go invite Hatori to dinner." The writer said hurriedly as he rushed to find a phone.

The two teenagers could only stare on in confusion at the space Shigure had previously occupied.

"What's his problem?"

"No idea."

* * *

**AN: Okay, ladies and gents I have an announcement to make. I normally don't do this, so savor the moment. Thanks, okay? I realize it's been centuries since I updated this, but you guys have been great in not pushing me too much. I haven't gotten a death threat or a 'man up' carelessly thrown around from this story, and you have all been very understanding. I know this might not be my best work, but I wanted to get something out for guys. **

**So, humiliating me time is over. Enjoy and as always, thoughts are appreciated. **


	4. Chapter 4

"What do you mean he's staying for dinner!"

Shigure thought that the reaction was rather tame. Considering the fact that Yuki had basically stepped into the house in a silent rage, things could have taken a much more violent turn. "I mean that he's sitting at the dinner table and eating with us, of course."

"Why on earth would you allow that?"

The writer tiredly ran a hand through his hair. "Well, when a person spends the night in someone else's home, there is some expectation to be given food at the proper intervals."

"He's spending the night?" The boy growled out angrily.

Shigure decided that **now** would be a good time to retreat to the safety of his office. Every manuscript needed to be properly edited before being sent to the printing press, he always said, so it was only right that each one be looked over at least seven times. Though, looking at Yuki once again, maybe his present project needed to be relooked at seven or eight _hundred_ more times before he was certain of its worth. So with a rushed 'excuse me' Shigure practically ran for the room in question and settled himself at his desk. Unfortunately, the act did him no good. Yuki simply followed him, making the older Sohma regret not having some kind of lock on the door.

"You're just going to let him stay here without a fight?"

"I wasn't aware there was a fight to be had."

Yuki looked less than impressed with the answer. If anything, it only fueled to enrage him. "Are you aware of how big a thorn in my side that insufferable detective has been since he walked into our lives?"

"Not at the moment, no." But he was sure the teenager was all too willing to let him know. In excruciating detail.

"He used to introduce me to all the neighborhood kids, and his parents, as a girl with serious gender confusions."

Shigure could see how that could have been uncomfortable. It couldn't have been an easy idea to dismiss once you really thought about it. Yuki had always been small, his voice had always been soft, and the clothes he wore, compliments of the older females in the family, had always seemed less than even slightly masculine. Plus, Shinichi was good at making sense. If he told you a pig could fly, and then proceeded to give random but coherent pieces of proof, you would be using a set of binoculars to go pig watching in the sky. Making strangers believe that someone, who looked female, was a girl, was in no way a stretch for him. Making those same strangers believe otherwise once he was through with them, was.

"He used to set up mousetraps outside his door whenever he heard I was coming over. Then he would tell the cat where they were hidden so I would be the only one with things snapping all over his feet."

Shigure could recall getting a few phone calls about injured fingers and toes from incidents involving those traps. At least one out of every batch managed to hit their target. After the third incident, he wondered why Yuki kept insisting on going with Kyo when the child was planning a visit with the little Kudo.

"And for my tenth birthday he sent me stuffed rat doll."

"Well, that was very nice of him."

"Its head was cut off!"

The writer did his best not to sigh in frustration.

Yuki was far from done. "And he has the gall to insist on staying here, when he has plenty of money to go elsewhere, as if we owe him anything. He has a lot of nerve." Violet eyes darted towards the ceiling, no doubt picturing the inside of Kyo's room which sat directly above the office, as well as who it might house. "Where is he? Is he still here?"

"Not right now." And thank goodness for that. He knew, now at least, that a blowout was soon to occur in the form of a long, pent up rage. Lucky for him, he still had some time to prepare for it. "He and Kyo went out to pick up a few things. Special guests equal movies and an obnoxious amount of junk food I suppose. And to be fair," He gazed upon Yuki with a stern face. "Shinichi didn't insist on staying here."

Yuki's anger only deflated slightly. "He didn't?"

"No." Shigure told him calmly. With any luck, if he kept the tone of the conversation composed and collected, even if another surge of vicious anger did arise, the atmosphere in the house would only remain tense. It would be a far cry from the violent one he had been expecting when Yuki and Tohru had come home from school. "In fact Shinichi had always intended to go out and find a hotel out of respect for any inconvenience it would cause me. He told me as much before he walked out the door in search of one."

"Then why is he still here?"

"Kyo wanted him to stay. He asked me if it was alright, that he would set up a spot for Shinichi in his room, and I said it was fine. Shinichi even tried to pay me for it, but I saw no reason to charge him for his friendly visit down here."

The rat scoffed. "His visit has been far from friendly."

"For you, maybe, but for Kyo he's a welcome visitor and a much desired guest." At this point he just wanted the other boy to see some semblance of reason. "Kyo has yet to make any good friends since he's moved here."

"He has plenty."

"None that he's been this happy to see. And he hasn't once invited anyone over for a visit. Would it be too big of a problem to let him have one day with a person he gets along with?" Yuki opened his mouth. "Tohru doesn't count. She's a wonderful person, and one of Kyo's closest friends, but a man needs some quality male bonding every once in a while."

Yuki stilled looked prepared to argue. Then, a knock on the door to the office was heard, followed by a soft request to come in.

Shigure recognized the voice instantly. "Tohru!" He cried out in relief. "Oh thank heavens. Come in."

Tohru quietly stepped inside. She bowed slightly to the two in the room and smiled. Shigure wondered how she could afford to look so cheerful when the tension in the room was so palpable. He could have cut it with a knife if he wanted to. She either didn't notice the atmosphere, or was simply choosing to ignore it.

At any rate, she held up a piece of paper and pointed to it, a small question in her confused eyes. Shigure could make out the familiar chicken scratch of Kyo's hurried handwriting and the slightly messy scrawl Shinichi was known to leave on paper when he was in a rush. It was a note, he realized, that the two must have left for Tohru. However, the poor girl was so unused to it that she probably couldn't even make out her own name at the bottom of the page.

"Oh that's right. The boys didn't want you to waste time with making dinner. Since Shinichi's staying here tonight, they thought they'd celebrate with some take out."

"Shinichi-Kun's staying here? Like a sleepover?"

Shigure nodded. "He's leaving for home soon, but until then he'll be staying with us."

She smiled brightly at the news. "That'll be fun!"

Yuki groaned. "Miss Honda, you're not the least bit upset about this?"

She shook her head. "Not at all. This will be the perfect time to get to know Shinichi-Kun a bit better. Kyo's told me so much about him already, but it'll be good to hear some stories straight from him."

Shigure nodded eagerly. Tohru was his last hope for a decent evening. If she was excited about Shinichi being there, then Yuki would not possibly be able to rebuke his presence. He would have to tolerate him, at the very least, for her sake. "Come to think about it, I bet he has hundreds of interesting tales to tell. His mother is a famous actress and his father is a mystery writer. Add that to his own little set of mysteries…"

Tohru's eyes were aglow with excitement. Her opinion on the matter was already decided. She was going to welcome her visitor. The only question remaining was whether or not Yuki would deflate any ounce of her selfless joy. He had never been selective when his kindness to Tohru had been concerned. Would he start now? Was he so spiteful towards Shinichi and Kyo that he would upset her, even the tiniest bit?

No. That was simply out of the question. "Fine. He can stay."

Shigure blatantly refused to give in to the urge to tell the teenager that it wasn't his house, so he needn't give his approval. He simply smiled and gave his thanks. "You won't regret this Yuki."

The rat hardly looked convinced. "That's highly unlikely."

The doorbell rang, causing the teenagers in the room to look towards the direction of the front door.

"Another guest?" The last thing the violet eyed teen needed was another surprise.

Shigure looked too happy about the sound for it to be anything good. "Oh that's just my back-I mean Hatori!" He stood up and quickly rushed to the door.

* * *

Kyo and Shinichi were heard entering the house a couple of hours later. At that point the group, now featuring Hatori, were anxiously waiting for the food they had been promised. Hatori and Shigure strategically sat themselves at the heads of the table, placed Tohru and Yuki next to each other, and left the empty spaces for Kyo and Shinichi. Shigure called it his, 'Avoid disaster at the table before it can start' strategy. Hatori called it paranoia.

Shinichi walked into the dining room a few minutes later holding up several plastic bags with different logos running across them. He was taken back a bit when he saw that there were four people seated instead of three."I didn't think you'd really invite Hatori."

"More like cried and begged until I agreed to make an appearance."

Shigure frowned at the now chuckling detective. "Now why is it you never greet him so stuffily?"

"Because, as he so graciously reminded me last time I forgot," The detective said as he placed the bags down on the table. "He is a very skilled doctor with more than one way to mess with my body without leaving any noticeable trace of malpractice."

The dog had to hand it to the doctor. That was an awfully brilliant trick.

For a moment the room was filled with quiet murmurs as Shinichi set about placing food on several paper plates, letting Tohru give out napkins and plastic utensils. He hadn't wanted her to trouble herself over something so small, but she had insisted on helping her guest. He relented after only a few minutes of gentle arguments, quickly learning that Tohru's smile could do a magnitude of things. One of which was getting you to agree to her terms without much of a struggle. Yuki had been oddly silent the entire time. It was a fact that had not gone unnoticed by the young sleuth, who looked up to find that he was being stared at intently by darkened violet eyes.

"Can I help you?" He asked politely, setting down the last of the, now that Shigure thought about it, very huge amount of food he had purchased.

Yuki narrowed his eyes. "Why are you wearing the cat's clothes?"

Shigure took a closer look at what the brunette was wearing. Yuki was right. The teenager had changed from what had to have been his school uniform, into a pair of Khakis and a familiar blue sweatshirt that belonged to the stubborn cat of the family.

"Kyo let me borrow them." Shinichi answered as he took a seat opposite of Tohru. "Said the ones I had on looked too stuffy."

"They do." Kyo said, arriving at last with a semi large box underneath his arm, and sitting down next to the brunette at the table. With everyone present the meal, which consisted of several different nations all mixed together on different areas of the table, finally began.

"I don't know how you manage to stay in that thing all the time." Kyo said after a few bites had been taken. "I know it's you uniform and all, but looks like a damn business suit and is probably just as uncomfortable."

"You get used to it after a while." Shinichi picked at the collar of the sweatshirt. "These are a bit too loose on me."

"My clothes used to fit you just fine."

"That was when we were kids and had roughly the same body build. You've bulked up since the last time I saw you."

"It's not that I bulked up. It's that you don't eat." The redhead flicked the detective's forehead. "You need to stop skipping meals so much."

Tohru looked around at the setup before her. "Is that why there's so much?"

Kyo nodded. "Italian, Japanese, Spanish, and French cuisine, all somehow miraculously found at several chain restaurants around the city." No wonder they had taken so long to get back. Kyo must have purposely wandered around until he found these out of the way restaurants. Shigure knew no such places that were local. "My plan is to fatten him up and send him back home with a little more meat on his bones."

"Which is when, exactly?" Yuki's falsified nice tone was a very eerie sound to behold.

Kyo was simply annoyed by it. "Tomorrow night."

"Oh, so soon?" Almost everyone could hear the underline happiness in his voice.

Hatori, graciously, decided that that was his cue to step in. "Did you skip school to come here Shinichi?"

The boy in question scratched the back of his head. "How'd you know?"

"You wouldn't wear your school uniform here. Too many incidents relating to your formal dress have occurred to make you think it would be a good call." Near bowtie strangulation, inappropriate insults, and ruined _expensive_ articles of clothing, just to name a few. "If you could, you would have dressed in something more casual to avoid any repeats. So I can only assume you had every intention of going into the building, yet not staying for the entire duration of the actual school day. Played sick?"

"Went in the front door and just walked out the back."

Shigure laughed. "I would scold him for it, if Kyo hadn't done the nearly the exact same thing. At least one of them actually made it into a building today."

Tohru frowned. "Won't you get in trouble for that?"

The brunette shook his head. "Naw. This wouldn't be the first time I've skipped out in order to attend more important matters."

"That's right. You're a detective! I had almost forgotten."

He smiled. "Yeah, the police department in Beika usually let me help out on the cases they're stuck on, which gives me a get out jail free card when school is involved."

Kyo bumped his friend's shoulder playfully, smirking when the other caught his eye. "They 'let' you help? You told me they practically begged you to solve their cases for them."

"I was trying not to lessen the good ladies respect for the police force. Thanks."

"Anytime."

Shigure caught sight the box he had seen Kyo carry down earlier. "What's that Kyo?"

The cat let out a small, 'Oh yeah' before reaching for the item in question and handing it to Tohru. "You told me this morning that you wanted to see some pictures of when we were younger." She took what was handed to her. "Shinichi helped me find it for you before we left."

Minutes later the entire table was laughing and smiling as countless memories were told and shown through the photographs in the box. It was amazing how many pictures were nestled into that container, and shocking how much of their history those at the table could remember. Even Yuki offered a friendly word or two as the hours went by, which was shockingly not taken in offense by the two sitting opposite of him. By the time every one of them was ready to retire to bed, they all had the same thought in their mind.

"It went better than I thought it would."

* * *

"I can't believe you called me over here for absolutely nothing." Hatori said once the high school students had gone off to bed, leaving the table still loaded with about half of what had been brought to it. "I told you that you were overreacting."

Shigure pouted. "Oh sure, they act well behaved when _you're _here."

"They can act well behaved when I'm not. They're not children anymore."

"I wonder sometimes." Yuki's miniature revolt that afternoon was proof enough that they weren't nearly as grown up as they'd sometimes like people to believe. "Say, Hatori, did you know that Shinichi introduced Yuki to his parents as a girl?"

Hatori raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

"Uh-huh. And apparently, during visits, Shinichi would also set mousetraps for Yuki to step on. He would mention their location to Kyo beforehand so he wouldn't get hurt."

"You don't say."

"And when Yuki turned ten, he received a headless rat doll courtesy of his less than dear detective."

Hatori merely hummed in response.

"Perhaps it would be a bad idea to let Shinichi come over anymore, at least when Yuki's around. They may have been fine tonight, but neither makes any attempts to hide their contempt for the other. I can handle that kind of thing from Yuki and Kyo, but Shinichi's not family."

"Sounds like you've given this a lot of thought."

"What's with the tone then?"

"What do you mean?" The other asked, eyebrow raised.

Shigure sighed. "It's sounds like you think I've missed a point completely. That's your, 'I'm sitting with an idiot' voice. Care to share why it came up?"

Hatori rose from the table and walked into the kitchen, ignoring the question completely much to his friend's annoyance. There was a pot of coffee that had been brewed not five minutes earlier, compliments of their houseguest, and was therefore still warm. The doctor poured himself a cup, and almost as an after thought decided to grab his cousin a mug as well, this one being mixed in with two spoonfuls of sugar. Every action was deliberately slow with no accompaniment by his voice.

When he returned to the table, Shigure was frowning. "Do I get some kind of reaction? A 'yes' or a 'no you idiot'?"

Hatori took a sip from his cup. "I can't honestly imagine what possessed him to send such a cryptic toy knowing that he was likely to be told on, and I can only assume that calling Yuki a girl was simple immaturity on Shinichi's part."

"So, I should tell him not to come here anymore?"

Hatori shrugged. "It's your house. Therefore it's your call." Shigure knew there was a 'but' in there somewhere. "You should know that the mousetraps did have their reason though."

"They did?"

He nodded. "Don't ask me why, and don't ask me who made him do it, but earlier that week Yuki had filled Kyo's favorite book bag with kitty litter, and had replaced his lunch with several plastic bags filled with catnip. When he opened it during school hours, the kids around him started teasing him about it, mercilessly."

The dog frowned. "I don't see why. They didn't even understand the joke."

"They didn't have to. All they knew was that someone had played a trick on Kyo, and because he gave a suitable enough reaction, it was all the motivation they needed to laugh along."

So that was it? "I see."

"Needless to say, when Shinichi found out about it, he made some plans of his own to ensure that Yuki felt just as terrible as Kyo did."

Perhaps he was being rash then. "So I should allow him to continue to come over?"

"If you want to." Hatori took another sip of his coffee. Shigure could hardly understand how the other could it drink it black. No sugar, no cream, no anything to make it more bearable for normal human consumption. It was nearly incredible, in a weird sort of way. "Just make sure you know what you're doing before you take this decision up with the rest of the members in this house. Remember, you're not going to be able to make everyone happy."

Meaning that the writer was up for a challenge regardless of what decision he made. It was either Kyo or Yuki, the cat or the rat, and if he chose one over the other, he ran the risk of making them think he played favorites. While it wouldn't be the first time the accusation had been made, this situation was bit different than most. It was much more delicate than the usual, 'You like this person more than me' and the consequences would prove to be much more severe. Fatal, even, if he were to truly take in the full brunt of what the situation entailed. He had to be careful.

"When did things get so complicated?" He ran a hand through his hair. "Things with Tohru were never this hard."

"We're so easily forgetful of why." Hatori pointed out. "Tohru, we could argue, walked into this situation without a bias. Therefore her presence in this family is for all of us. Shinichi," The doctor said with a slight hint of a smile. "Is for Kyo and Kyo alone. The two of them are very different."

His friend hummed. "Yet it would still be unfair if I kicked out one just because they were here only for one." He took a sip of his own cup of coffee. "I should just stop. I don't think I'm making much sense anymore."

"You never do."

"Is there ever going to be a time when you're nice to me for the sake of being courteous?"

"I don't answer dumb questions."

* * *

"What the hell?"

Kyo jumped slightly at the loud noise. Mumbling quietly to himself about why it was he was being woken up when he had finally gotten to sleep, he peeked over the edge of his bed to see Shinichi nearly jolting out of his sleeping bag.

It was a rather amusing sight, he had to admit. "You know, some people actually like to sleep when it gets dark out. It's considered impolite to wake them up because you feel like playing around."

Shinichi glared at him. "Something bit me."

Kyo sighed and flopped down on his back. "I didn't know you were so sensitive to bug bites."

"It wasn't a bug. It was something els-shit!"

The redhead looked to the floor again. "Oi. What's with the obscenities-what the hell?"

Shinichi had himself pressed up against the wall as three semi large rats crawled out of the bottom of his sleeping bag. Mouths open, showing rows of sharp but crooked teeth, they ran straight for their intended target. They tried to at least. Kyo, true to his zodiac destiny, was much faster than they were. With a feral grace he dropped to the floor, snatched up the rodents by the tail, and held them at arm's length. They hissed and wailed, as well as rats could, snapping at his arm in an attempt to force him to release them. He had been told countless times in his youth to _**never**_ hold a rat that way. Hanging onto to its tail in that fashion was painful for the small creatures, and if he held on for too long the skin would tear from the rat's own weight, peeling off completely in a matter of minutes.

"Leave." He told them. "And tell any of your little buddies to steer clear if they know what's good for them." He tossed the rodents onto the floor. They scurried away the moment their paws touched the floor.

He could hear a creaking sound not two seconds later, and Kyo turned to see that Shinichi had climbed onto his bed. "Thanks."

He shrugged. "No problem. Care to tell me why you're sitting on my bed."

"Oh I'm going to do more than sit on it." The detective proceeded to tuck himself in. "Goodnight."

Kyo rolled his eyes, but walked over to the other side and got under the blankets without complaint. "They shouldn't come back, not after that treatment, if that's what you're worried about."

"More will come. I can almost guarantee it."

Kyo couldn't argue with that. They both knew who had sent the first batch, and they were well aware that he would send more, if only to annoy the occupants of the room. If Shinichi was near Kyo, however, they wouldn't run the risk of trying to bite him again. The redhead may have looked human, but he had the same dangerous aura of a cat. They wouldn't risk it. "Don't hog the blankets."

"I'll think about it."

Kyo scooted closer. Shinichi was known for hogging sheets and pillows in his sleep. He was used to having beds to himself, so it could be argued that he wasn't too used to sharing. Though, as long as the two of them remained close enough, that wouldn't prove to be too much of a problem. If another warm body was right there next to him, Shinichi seemed to subconsciously know that he didn't need to tug and keep hold of much of anything else to stay warm. "Someone's going to say something if they see us."

"And?" It didn't bother Shinichi.

Truth be told, it didn't bother Kyo too much either. "Nothing. Goodnight."

"Night."

"And Shinichi?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm glad you found me again."

"I am too."

* * *

**AN: And cut! I hate fillers. I really do, but they have to be done or else things tend to jump around without making much sense. Sorry. On the plus side, you guys get a new chapter. Though I admit that I was rather rushing to get this thing out today before the hurricane starts tomorrow, so if the ending was sloppy feel free to tell me I suck. Just make sure to include how I can improve. **

**A few shout outs from the last chapter. **

**Saharra Shadow, I have never heard that expression before, but I find that I really like it, especially in the context of this story. Thanks for the new term. You have earned an awesome point.**

**Sathrealtoo, hope this is soon enough. ;)**

**kuroange1, it has been revived. Please feel free to celebrate as you wish. **

**Thank you to everyone else who reviewed. Until next time. **


	5. Chapter 5

**AN: Surprised to see me again so soon? I am too, to tell you the truth, but let's take this as a good thing, shall we? Sorry this chapter is still a bit of a filler, but it does actually have significance to the rest of the story. So enjoy this bit of poorly executed angst while it lasts.**

**kurogane1: You'll see plenty later on. I tend to have way too much fun with triangles like this, so it's pretty much a given. Now that you mention it I think we all need our very own Shinichi.**

**twilightserius: They probably have no clue. These two are so oblivious they wouldn't notice a thing unless someone mentioned it to them.**

**This chapter is brought to you by the Vocaloid song ACUTE, sung by Kaito, Miku Hatsune, and Luka Megurine. Suggested to me by my friend Mistress as a fit for the story. Continue on and have a great day.**

* * *

Yuki wasn't sure how he should react to the situation before him. On one hand he could remain calm about the whole thing and simply turn around without getting himself involved. But, on the other hand, it was incredibly hard to do something like that when you were staring at your cousin lying in bed with a boy you greatly despised. In that case, the rat was pretty sure it was perfectly acceptable to resort to some kind of violent behavior. Kyo was being violated, right? Therefore Yuki had to protect him somehow, right? So why wasn't he moving? Why was he frozen in the doorway, afraid to move?

A part of him whispered that this was Kyo's room, therefore it was forbidden territory to him. He could not enter for he, the rat, was not invited. But the wolf was. Shinichi was welcomed wherever Kyo could be found. In his life, in his home, and, apparently, in his bed. There was something about that that made the inside of the violet haired teen's body boil. Something about the way the two were wrapped around each other, cuddled close together, no doubt relishing in the body heat, that made him want to just rip the detectives arm right out of its socket. The action certainly felt justified. So why wouldn't his body _move_?

* * *

_Yuki suddenly felt very cold._

_He remembered falling asleep next to warmth after a long tiring day of play. It was a weekend, and following the tradition that had been set up only a few months prior, Kyo was sleeping over at Shinichi's house. This time, at the insistence of Shigure, Yuki was allowed to come along as well. The day had been pleasant, spent in the company of Shinichi's parents._

_Yusaku told the boys dozens of stories, ranging the terrifying to overly sappy, making pit stops to the mysterious and the extraordinary before his small audience began showing signs of fatigue. Yuki had not wanted the man to stop. He had never heard a voice laced with such incredible story telling ability. It was somewhat like Shinichi's without the bitter bite laying beneath the surface. Yusaku's voice would fluctuate and change whenever the words would shift to create twists and sudden changes in the story. And the way the man spoke with feeling, as though he had been present throughout the entire ordeal of which he was speaking of, was too amazing for the young boy to put into words. He wanted to hear more, even though his body cried out for sleep. The man seemed to notice. With a promise of another tale in the morning, the older Kudo sent the three up to bed._

_Yukiko tucked them in with a gentle hand, kissing each on the forehead as she went about making certain that they were all snug where they lie. This was also amazing to Yuki. Shinichi was cold and icy towards him, but Yukiko was kind and soft with all three of the boys she had in her care that night. Each of them, from Shinichi down on the floor in his sleeping bag, to Kyo and Yuki sleeping next to each other on the brunette's bed, were as comfortable as they could be. They could have fallen asleep right then, but Yukiko just had to be sure. So she sang a lullaby, english, but no less sweet to his young ears, until their eyes closed and they were no longer conscious. And Yuki had been so warm._

_Then he found that the warmth he had fallen asleep with was gone. For a moment he remained still on the bed. He wasn't quite sure why the chill was there, and thought that if he stayed where he was it would return in due time. But the seconds turned to minutes and the cold, which had quickly become bitter, still remained. He sat up, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand, looking for the reason why he had been awoken in such a way. It did not take him long to discover why. Kyo was no longer by his side. _

_The rat panicked. In that one moment a dozen possibilities ran through his head. Kidnapping, running away, a monster in the dead of the night, they all seemed plausible to him. He nearly flung himself out of bed, determined to find his cousin and bring him back, until he caught sight of where the other was._

_Shinichi's sleeping bag was not intended for more than one person. Yet he and Kyo seemed more than content to lie beside each other within its confides in comfort. It would seem that space had been the last thing on the redhead's mind when he crawled in beside the young detective sometime earlier that night. The brunette next to him seemed to have no qaulms about the arrangements either. They were obviously not bothered by the way their bodies curled up against each other in an attempt to seek warmth. _

_But Yuki was. The violet haired child was so bothered by it that his lungs refused to function for a second. When they started working again, he started to cry softly, gripping the sheets beneath him harshly. The two on the floor did not awaken. He could not bring himself to move. He could not bring himself to try and separate them._

_He knew it would be impossible._

* * *

A small noise brought Yuki from the depths of his memory.

Kyo had woken up, and was now going through the small routine meant to sharpen his senses before his day began. It started with the usual rubbing of his eyes, then a loud yawn where his body would stretch and flex beneath whatever flimsy shirt he had worn the night before. Then he would rub at his eyes a second time, mumbling daily complaints to himself about the hour and the tasks he had to complete by the days end. It would end by forcing himself to stand and drag his unwilling body over to the shower.

This particular morning the routine included an extra step. This time Kyo spared a lingering look to Shinichi who was still sleeping beside him. In his eyes there was a small question. Did he wake the other up, or did he let him rest for a little while longer? With a smile he appeared to decide on the latter and ruffled the brunette locks softly. Shinichi gave a soft murmur of protest before snuggling further into the mattress.

Kyo jumped off the bed, ready to head on to the shower while his energy was still high enough, and locked gazes with the rat in his doorway. He blinked, Yuki blinked, and suddenly the air around them was tense.

Kyo was the one who eventually broke the silence. "What are you doing here?"

Yuki was sure his face was about as red as his cousin's eyes. "I came to wake you up." He was surprised at how calm his voice was.

Kyo, for his part, was far less graceful in his retort. "Well...I'm up...so leave."

Yuki rolled his eyes. At least he could still get the upper hand every now and again when Shinichi was around. One of them just had to be unconscious. Speaking of which...His gaze turned to the boy tucked away in some sweet dreams. He just wanted to go and snatch them away. He wanted the other to have a rude awakening. He could not explain why, only knowing that the reason for his harsh intent was a deep seeded sense of bitterness that had been present since childhood.

Something in the back of his mind reminded him that time was irrelevant to this one. Years without seeing the other had not dulled the affection or closeness the two best friends had shared. If anything, he noted in irritation, it had gotten stronger. It made him very, very angry.

Kyo seemed to sense the intentions radiating off of the other, and placed himself almost completely in front of the boy in his bed. "Leave him alone." He told Yuki. "He needs his rest and he shouldn't have to get up just yet."

The violet haired teen raised an eyebrow. "You realize that today is a school day, don't you? Do you intend to leave him behind?"

"Hardly. You know how this works. Where one of us goes, the other follows."

"Shigure is not going to let you skip school again." He did not want the two of them to be alone with each other for too long. Not again, a childish part of him screamed out, not when he could do something to prevent it.

Kyo simply rolled his eyes. "You're a day late. Shigure gave me that same speech yesterday when I got home."

"So what do you intend to do?"

"Take him with me." The answer seemed so simple.

Too simple for Yuki to have an appropriate argument against. So he simply picked at the logic. "Then shouldn't you wake him up? Otherwise you're going to be late."

This seemed to greatly amuse the cat. "Unless you want us to shower together-"

The rat sputtered and angrily hissed out, "You're disgusting."

The reaction made his cousin roll his eyes. "Relax. I was only trying to make a point. I was going to let him sleep until I was done with mine, but since you seem like you're in so much of a rush, the only way to save time would be for Shinichi and I to share one. But it looks like you hate that idea too."

The rat clenched his fists. Kyo had no idea how close he was to being pulverized.

"Just let him sleep." The cat told him. "It will only cost us a few minutes."

Yuki knew that he should leave. If he remained, the boy before him would wind up hurt. There was a rage festering inside of him that he was not entirely too sure he could control. It wanted the sleeping figure, but if Kyo continued to protect him, then soon it wouldn't matter who got hit.

"Just hurry it up." He said, turning to the door swiftly.

In this case, it as better to admit defeat than suffer a greater loss.

* * *

Yuki could hardly stand the way all of his classmates flocked to him, to_ that boy_, without a second thought. It was like watching an entire flock of sheep run to their new handler. Or like an overly excited dog rushing up to it's owner for even a second of decent attention. Completely sickening. To be fair, though, it wasn't entirely their fault. He stood out like a sore thumb. He had turned down Kyo's offer of a spare uniform, instead showing up to their classes in his own blue blazer. The outfit was a bit of a trademark. Most knew who he was because of it, others had just heard of his remarkable success as a detective, and were pleased to have such a person in their midst.

A few had less than honorable intentions, batting their eyes and inviting him to sit with them at lunch. Shinichi politely ignored the flirting, kindly turned down the invitations for further plans, simply smiled, and played the part of a good celebrity. However, he always brought his eyes back to the cat he had seated himself next to, faithfully remaining by the teenager's side despite everyone crowding around him. Kyo lapped up the undivided attention like it was milk.

Yuki wondered why he was affected by it so much.

Once class began, things were much quieter and focused. Yet Kyo and Shinichi continued to keep their focus on nothing but each other. Whispering and laughing as though they were schoolgirls gossiping about the latest transfer student. And they were sitting _so damn close_ to each other. It was indecent, it was disrespectful to the rest of their classmates, it was...

Just how the two of them had always been. As much as it pained him to admit, that closeness they shared was nothing new.

* * *

_Shinichi quickly covered the redhead's eyes and crushed the boy's body to his. Kyo clutched onto the other as tightly as he could, trying his best not to let the images he had seen seconds ago forever imprint themselves into his mind. Yuki could do little more than stare at the body on the floor. A bullet to the head was all the damage that had been done to the man, and yet there was so much blood. How could one person have so much liquid hidden inside of him? How could such a tiny man gush out so much?_

_"Why?" Kyo cried out. "Why would someone do something like this?"_

_The police rallied around them, trying to collect evidence from the crimescene before it became too contminated to search. Yusaku tried to usher the children away from the scene they had accidentally stummbled across. It was no place for children. Not when the culprit had yet to be caught. Not when Kyo and Yuki were so visibly upset._

_Shinichi did his best to soothe his shaken up friend. "It's alright. It's alright."_

_"No it's not!" The redhead cried out. "The person who did this is still here! What if he gets us too?"_

_Something happened to Shinichi just then. His eyes hardened and a determined fire began to spread inside of them. His grip on Kyo tightened a moment before he pushed the other away, just far enough for them to see eye to eye. He wiped away the tears that had begun to form in the other's eyes, and in a rare publicly tender moment he placed a soft kiss on the cat's forehead. "You don't have to worry." He told the other gently. "I'll figure out who did this before the night's through. Then we can go home without a care in the world."_

_Yuki watched, Yusaku's hand on his shoulder, as the brunette tried to pull himself away. Kyo quickly reattached himself to his best friend's side._

_"No! You're not allowed to leave me behind!"_

_Shinichi hesitated before taking Kyo's hand in his own. "Alright, then we'll go together. But don't let go of my hand for anything, okay? And don't leave my side for a second." The other nodded his agreements._

_Shinichi did end up solving the crime that night. The victim, a big tycoon of the business world, had been having an illicet affair behind his battered wife's back. The other woman, as it turns out, had been just as abused as his wife had been. The two met, realized what they had in common, and planned a simple yet effective method to rid them of their little problem. Unfortunately, neither of them thought that a small detective, intent on making sure his best friend felt safe and secure, would come in and unravel their little plot._

_Truth be told it was not a complicated scheme, simple in its development and execution, but it was the number of bullet holes that had thrown the police off. There seemed to be one entry and one exit wound, when in reality there had been two. One of a smaller caliber shot from one direction while the victim was alive, and another larger caliber bullet shot postmortem in nearly perfect alignment with the other. Autopsy results would show that the larger bullet had not been the one to cause his death, even though it was the one present at the crime scene. To make matters worse the bullet found was registrered to a gun neither woman owned. Shinichi had found the second bullet, which did belong to a pistol owned by the deceased's wife, and had revealed the culprits in true Holmes fashion. One would not go down without the other, and so both were now within custody of the police._

_Throughout the entire ordedal Kyo had kept his hold on Shinichi. There had not been one instant where one had not been touching the other. They remained as close as they could. Even when the murderesses looked ready to rip the small detective's face off, neither had let go. Even as they arrived back at the Kudo residence, even as they were tucked into bed, they still kept their hand locked._

_Yuki was oddly sickened by the sight._

* * *

Once school had let out, the quartet made their way to a nearby electronic store. Shinichi had come across it earlier the previous day n. He had only browsed the shop's shelves briefly, but there were a few items that had managed to catch his eye. Now that he had a chance to come back, he wanted to purchase them while he was still in town. Those items, the group soon discovered, were some fairly expensive cell phones.

"I don't want to lose contact again." He said, looking pointedly at Kyo. "So I'm going to ensure there's no excuse for it."

Tohru had bashfully tried to refuse the offer. The electronics surrounding them were of exceptional quality and were tremendously expensive. Plus, there was the added expense of the plans the phones would come with. That was a lot to pay for on a monthly basis. Shinichi was still a student. He could not possibly afford such large bills every month. She told him as much.

Shinichi only smiled. He told her that he refused to let them leave until they each had a cell phone in their possession. It would make him feel better about leaving. "Maybe it's because I run into death on such a regular basis, but I get worried when I can't get in touch with my friends."

She couldn't possibly say no after that. Though she did try and convince him to let her pay at least part of the bill. Yuki wasn't quite sure what they had decided on, but after a couple of hours both Kyo and Tohru had a phone and were more than happy to put them on a counter. Kyo had picked out a red and black colored phone, Tohru had settled for a light pink, and Shinichi had, for some reason, chosen a dark purple phone. The detective already had a cell phone on hand, so why he wanted a second one was beyond him, but it was his money he was wasting. More power to the brat.

It wasn't until he was outside, when the brunette tried to hand him the phone, that Yuki understood what that extra electronic had been for. And it brought back memories of another time Shinichi had tried playing nice.

* * *

_Yuki couldn't honestly come up with a reason why he was putting himself through this torutre. Shinichi did not like him. Kyo barely tolerated his preseance. And he, even on the best of days, could only handle the two of them in small doses. So why he insisted on going with them on these little outings was a mystery. He must have liked being ganged up on because that was just about the only thing that happened when they all got together._

_"Kyo, want some ice cream?"_

_The redhead nodded and Shinichi bounded over to the cart in the park, leaving Yuki and Kyo in the sand box. Up until that point they had all done their best to create little cities in the corners of the large wooden box. Since there were four areas, each took hold of one and decided to leave the fourth open as 'uncharted territory'. Later they would pretend to be presidents and kings of these spots and try to make treaties and peace agreements between them. It was a complicated game to play, but Shinichi and Kyo had played it many times before. They always managed to beat Yuki in this game where there was supposed to be no winner. Yuki had tried his hardest to learn the rules, study the tricks, and come out on top. He read books, paid attention to the way the other two made their decisions, and when all else failed he used his instincts to try and gain the upper hand. It never worked. Two against one was never a fair fight, and victory always went to the ones who could afford to stack the odds on their side._

_Shinichi came back with three ice cream cones in his arms. One chocolate, one vanilla, and one strawberry placed in a light and crunchy cone . The strawberry cone was handed to Kyo, Shinichi kept the vanilla for himself, and offered the chocolate to Yuki. For a moment all the rat did was look at the treat, blinking repeatedly before he looked up at the brunette holding it. Was it poisoned? Did he spit in it before coming back to the box? Was there a bug in it?_

_Shinichi became annoyed after a moment of presumably being ignored. "It's food princess. You know, the kind you eat?"_

_Yuki glared. "What's wrong with it?"_

_"Nothing! Just take it."_

_The boy did not move. "I don't have any money to pay for it."_

_Shinichi sighed loudly, irritation lacing every sound that came out of his mouth. "You don't have to pay for it. It's my treat."_

_"Yeah right, and who's money did you use?"_

_The brunette's eye twitched. It was all he could do to keep from shoving the frozen food down the other's throat. "I do get an allowance you know, and there's a little something called saving up."_

_Yuki shook his head. "I don't want it."_

_Shinichi tried to force the cone on the smaller boy, but Yuki only pushed it back._

_"I said I don't want it!"_

_Shinichi sighed loudly yet again. "Can't you cooperate for once, princess?"_

_The rat simply glared. "So you can show off? I don't think so."_

_The brunette rolled his eyes. "I don't need to show off to anyone." He told the other coldly. "The only one whose opinion matters to me is already impressed. You're the one who needs to make a better impression."_

_Yuki felt the need to hit and scream. He had no idea what the other had said, but for some reason it struck a chord deep within his gut. He wanted to react to it._

_Kyo, who had been lapping happily at his ice cream during the entire conversation, rolled his eyes before taking the cone away from Shinichi. Yuki's hand, which had turned into a fist, was pried open by surprisingly gentle fingers. Yuki was so shocked that he did not so much as complain when the redhead made him clasp onto the cone firmly. Nor did he dare try to push the other away when Kyo, with his hand still slightly gripped around Yuki's, brought the frozen treat up to his cousin's face._

_"Lick."_

_The rat did as he was told without thinking. Chocolate was not necassarily his favorite flavor, but this particular chocolate ice cream cone tasted far better than anything he had ever eaten before._

_But to his disappointment, the moment he showed an ounce of joy on his face, Kyo nodded in satisfaction and pulled away. His body was then immediately gravitated back to Shinichi's side, where the two began laughing and showing each other what they had done with their 'kingdoms'. Yuki was once again ignored. Though he was used to it, he found he could not stand it this time. Not right now, not when they had been cruel enough to give him an ounce of attention. Not when Kyo had done something other than scowl at him with that furious anger in his eyes._

_"I'm paying you back for this." His mouth uttered before he had a chance to stop it. He could not help but mentally tell himself that that had not been what he intended to say, but it was far to late to take it back._

_The two paused in their conversation. Kyo shook his head with a rueful smile on his face, and Shinichi rolled his eyes. "Oi, Yuki-Hime."_

_"What?"_

_"Shut up."_

* * *

Shinichi had a very harsh way of getting his point across. He wouldn't blurt it in your face like Kyo would, and he wouldn't lace it with innuendo like Shigure would. Shinichi was subtle in his remarks, sly with his intentions. When he wanted to tell you something, he did it in a way that was sure to make you understand the full brunt of the situation without involving anyone else. Sometimes he was cruel in his methods.

Like now, for example. "Get that thing away from me."

The detective narrowed his eyes. "I got it for you, didn't I?"

Yuki was sure it was only to keep up appearances. It would look bad if he were to buy a phone for the other two members of their group and blatantly refused to purchase one for him. "I don't want it."

"Just take it. Don't make a scene."

"I'll make a scene if I want to. If nothing else it'll make you look like the fool you are."

"Who'd be playing the part of the fool, princess?" Shinichi asked, eyebrow raised. "I've already been accepted into this court, but the king is still debating whether or not he wants to lock you up in your tower."

That had been the intention all along. This was, in reality, nothing new. It was a constant game between the two of them. A secret war that pitted Rat against Wolf. The prize? The Cat's good graces. They had known it when they were kids and they knew it now. Kyo's opinion mattered and it was always being fought over with the most delicate of touches. Shinichi's hand was the one it always landed in, but that didn't mean Yuki didn't fight for it when he could. The other was well aware of this.

"Don't patronize me." Yuki growled out.

The detective was hardly afraid of the action. "You make it too easy."

And just like that afternoon so many years ago, Yuki felt the festering need to rip apart the brunette's face in the bloodiest way he could manage. And just like those many years ago, Kyo was the one to come to the rescue.

The redhead pulled himself away from Tohru and took hold of the phone in Shinichi's hand. Ignoring the looks he received from the two boys, he flipped open the device in his hand and struck a pose for the camera. It was simple, just a wink and a small smile before he plugged in his number, but those were two gestures Kyo would never normally exhibit when in regards to Yuki. Now they were immortalized on something the rat owned and could look back to later on. It felt like a victory, and it was only because of that feeling that he agreed to the keep the thing when Kyo handed it to him after he was done.

And yet, that victory didn't last long. Two minutes later the redhead reached for Shinichi and pulled him into an embrace, both of them smiling when the flash of the camera phone went off. They must have taken dozens of pictures, sometimes dragging Tohru in between them, until they claimed they had finally found the perfect one suitable enough to be shown when one of them called the other. Tohru, sweet Tohru, had done her best to keep Yuki occupied so as to not feel left out, but it was no use. His attention constantly drifted to the two causes of his current misery.

Why could they still affect him like this? No, the better question would be, how could Shinichi still get under his skin so much?

* * *

Yuki could not possibly explain how ecstatic he was when it was finally time for Shinichi to board the train home. It had only been two days and his patience had already been stretched to its limits. It somehow always did when the detective was involved. The brunette had to have been doing it on purpose. No one could have angered one person so many times and still claim it was unintentional.

"Are you sure you didn't forget anything?" Tohru asked worriedly, moments before the train was to depart.

Shinichi smiled back at her reassuringly. "I'm sure. I didn't come here with much, after all. Just my school bag."

"Be sure to visit again soon, okay?"

Yuki sincerely hoped he never would. However, as the detective embraced the smaller female and gave her a soft pat on the head, he realized that the offer would be taken up sometime in the near future. The very, very near future. The detective then politely held out a hand for Yuki to shake. It was another act of false cordiality he was sure. This time, though, the rat did not make a fuss. He simply shook the other's hand. It was best not to make a scene in such an open space. To do so would be just be giving the little heretic an ample supply of ammo to be used later on. The less he had access to the better.

Kyo was the last to say his goodbyes. He had raised an eyebrow when all Shinichi did was turn to him with his hand extended. It looked like he wanted a handshake, but the smirk on his face dared the cat to try something else in public. Kyo had no problem in returning the smirk or accepting the challenge. He lunged playfully for the other and brought him into his arms. Shinichi pretended to struggle and the two preoccupied themselves with a harmless fight. However, their fun brought them quite a bit of attention. People passing by seemed scandalized, some just looked confused, and soon it was finally enough to have the two break character and burst out laughing. Instead of going back to try for a second round, they settled for embracing each other in a tight hug.

Kyo lightly tapped Shinichi on the head when they separated. "Next time you had better give me a proper goodbye. Otherwise I won't be so gentle."

"I'll keep that in mind."

Minutes later Shinichi rushed onto the train, shouting a promise to return before long. Tohru looked delighted, Kyo looked happier than anyone had ever seen, and all Yuki could bitterly think was,

"Why did you have to come back?"


	6. Chapter 6

Shinichi could not help the wince that came after his front door had closed behind him. He had gotten used to the company of a friend, one who he had spent almost all of his time with, and suddenly coming back to an empty house was like a sharp slap to the face. It had only been two days. Two fulfilling days where he had been surrounded by the presence of a person who he had searched aimlessly for after Conan had basically disappeared from his life forever. He had been absolutely ecstatic to see that face again.

Kyo still looked like the little boy in the window Shinichi had stumbled across accidently. It had been years, but the detective could clearly remember every encounter the two of them had shared. How could he have forgotten? That fall had marked one of the turning points in his young life.

His mother had nearly completely retired from acting around that time, and his father had switched publishing companies. It meant a new publishing staff and a new editor. One that was very skilled in getting in touch with the Kudo's regardless of what they did to prevent it. It soon became a very big problem. Their simple little solution? Move to an entirely different location until the latest book had been completed. Shinichi could be home schooled for however long it took, and they could still have limited contact with everyone in Beika. Shinichi had merely nodded when his parents told him the news. He was eight. It wasn't as though he could really refuse the new arrangements. Instead he played along without so much as a fuss.

During those first few weeks he spent most of his free time placed in front of the television set or inside his father's study. Soon, though, the activated he could entertain himself with in those two rooms became overdone and increasingly boring. The TV stations had started to play nothing but reruns, and he had read nearly every book in his new house's temporary library. The neighborhood kids didn't interest him, so he took a risk of venturing outside, but a child could only take being cooped up for so long. He needed to get out of the house eventually.

However, on the bright side if things, the town he had been dragged to did have a lot of back roads and secret pathways that led into tiny forests. It was easy to get lost, to be absorbed in nothing but reaching some pointless destination until the light of day was gone. Shinichi got lost an awful lot.

One day he had wound up in a strangers backyard. To be fair, he hadn't known it was someone's backyard at the time. It had just been the general area where his soccer ball had gotten lost in. He hadn't even found his ball that day, even after minutes of searching, but he had spotted a house from the corner of his eye. And from that small glance he had seen what looked like a head of bright orange hair coming from a small circular window.

He had left soon after, but that image remained in his head. For some reason it struck a chord in him and he had not been able to get it out of his mind. He had been silent at dinner, restless at bedtime, and had finally been driven to find his way back to that house the next day.

That afternoon he finally got a decent chance to see that head of orange, and the boy it belonged to standing in front of the window. The distance made it impossible to get a good look at one another, but the detective had not cared. Not on that day. So instead of dwelling on the lack of close proximity, he focused on coaxing the boy in that attic into an innocent game.

It had been so fulfilling for something so simple. Yet it had been so short. The boy had fallen down, gotten back up, and ushered him away frantically. Shinichi wasn't sure if he had done something wrong, but had hurried off nonetheless.

But he had not been able to stay away. Instead he simply changed his approach. He climbed up a tree located right next to the house, one that was as high as the three story building, and waited. When he saw that head of hair again, he did his best to hang upside down next to the window. He had never been good at acrobatics like that, and it was a miracle he didn't fall to his death that day, but he knew he had to try. For the boy hidden in the attic, he had to try and get into that house.

The boy in the attic was soon given a name, Kyo, and Shinichi was given a brand new friend. One that could never stop intriguing him, no matter what was revealed about him after intense investigation. It was surprising how little of that had changed after so many years, after separation and lost contact.

The same red eyes, the same orange hair, the same cursed bracelet. Sure there were some minor differences here and there as a result of passing time. Kyo was taller, more muscled, and had a deeper voice than the last time they met. But the attitude was still the same, the passion dubbed in red was still very much present, and the desire to be close to him was thankfully still as strong as it had always been. Shinichi had seen proof of that the day before.

To be without it again, after too a short reunion, was like snatching away a cup of water from a man who had deprived of drink for weeks. Solitary company had always been something the detective enjoyed, but at that moment it was the worst thing he had ever experienced. A punishment he would not wish on even his most despised enemies.

"Oi, Kudo, you home?"

Shinichi blinked at the voice. It seemed to be coming from his kitchen, which was odd since nobody was supposed to be in his house at that moment. Warily he made his way towards the room in question and poked his head inside. To his surprise a certain Osakan detective was at his table with a half eaten box of pizza in front of him.

"Were you planning to save any for me?" Shinichi should have been asking a few more important questions. Ones like, 'How did you get in my house?', 'Who's check is that pizza coming out of?', or 'What are you even doing here?' He knew the answers to those though, so asking would have been pointless. Heiji had a key, had used his own money, for fear of what would happen if he did not, and was there to welcome his friend home. Whether it was with a plate of food had yet to be determined.

Heiji smiled and offered him the opposite chair. "Depended on how long it took you to get here."

Shinichi rolled his eyes, but sat down and took a slice anyway. He wasn't all too hungry at the moment. Tohru had not let him out of the house without one last meal, and Kyo had insisted on giving him snacks to take on the train ride home. He was only eating because the western detective would make a big fuss if his generosity was refused.

Heiji was pleased at the action. "So, how was your little quest?"

Shinichi could not help but smile.

Heiji could not help but notice. "That good huh?"

"I found him. That boy I told you I was looking for." The image of a teenage Kyo entered the brunette's mind. "He's not a little boy anymore, but he's still the same guy I remember."

"Did he remember you too?"

Shinichi nodded. "He did. Honestly, it was almost like I never left." His eyes darted to the bracelet on his wrist. "I was happy."

"And now?"

He sighed. "I didn't want to leave him."

The tanned detective frowned. "He means a lot to you, doesn't he?"

"The world." Shinichi ran a tired hand though his hair. "I've never told you much about him, have I?"

Heiji reached for a slice of pizza. "Just the bare bones. You met when you were kids and he's the reason why you never took off that bracelet. Unless you count the time you were about three feet shorter."

That wasn't a time Shinichi liked to remember very well. Even now, even though he was basically cured, a part of the poison that ruined his life was still with him. A part of it was still reminding him of the sacrifices he had made, and would have to continue to make. Most of the time Shinichi preferred to forget that the whole thing had ever happened.

What he had just discovered in a not too far off town was much more satisfying to think about. "His name's Kyo Sohma. I met him when I was eight after my father had moved us to a new town. I was only there for a year, but we happened upon each other on accident and became fast friends. We continued to visit each other for another year or so before he had to leave and… couldn't take me with him."

The Osakan raised an eyebrow. "That it?"

Shinichi smiled sadly. "It's a complicated situation. Paraphrasing is the only way I know how to explain it to you without getting confused myself."

That was a lie. Shinichi could have never mixed up the events those two years had made him experience. No amount of age changing, organization chasing, mind-blowing pain could ever change that. He just wasn't sure he could say it all to Heiji. So many secrets, so much hate, too many lies he would have to reveal. It was too risky. Shinichi was still bound to the Sohma family in a sick twisted sort of way because of Kyo, an in order to protect him, the detective would have to ensure that nothing of great importance was ever revealed. If that meant keeping something from a new best friend, then so be it. The first one was still a huge priority in the Heisei Holme's heart.

"I take it you'll make this trip again." Heiji asked him a moment later.

There was no need to ask. "As soon as I can." He leaned back in his chair, tossing the crust of his half finished slice back into the box. "Next time I may stay a bit longer."

"You know that's going to annoy Neechan, right?"

Shinichi nearly cringed. Ran was a **very** big problem when the cat was concerned. Just as Kagura was Shinichi's mortal enemy, Ran was Kyo's. It was a rivalry that had appeared during the second year of friendship between the two boys. Kyo had been dabbling in martial arts, taking classes at the expense of the Kudo family at a dojo in Beika. Ran had been partaking in that same interest that year, and when the two met…things did not go very well.

Kyo was naturally stronger, and the diligence at which he practiced his new art was astounding. Ran was just as good, but her emotional stability when fighting was seriously lacking. She often got too worked up by her opponent to properly control herself. Normally this would spell doom for the poor sap who requested a fight. With Kyo, however, it was different. Kyo knew how to keep his calm when fighting the girl, and could get her to lose control without breaking his own concentration. From there it was a simple matter of how long it would take before Ran was showed up again.

The redhead never tried to be better, which was a miracle in and of itself considering the attitude of most kids at that age. He simply wanted to survive, and in some cases, help Shinichi survive. Ran just wanted to defeat the boy she felt was taking her place in her dear friend's heart. Kyo's will and resolve always won out over hers when it mattered. The bitterness that left behind had never properly faded. God forbid you said the boy's name around Ran when she as upset, or brought up a time when he had come out victorious against her in a battle of strength.

"You didn't tell her where I went, did you?"

Heiji promptly looked everywhere but in Shinichi's general direction.

That was enough of an answer. "Thanks, Hattori, I really appreciate your unfaltering reliability." He muttered sarcastically, now mentally trying to figure out what lie he hadn't yet told that would suit the situation.

"I didn't know it was supposed to be a secret!"

"Why do you think I didn't tell her myself instead of going through the charade of going to school?"

Heiji had no answer. "Beats me."

"I should just for the trouble you've caused me." He wouldn't though. Heiji was an idiot at times but he meant well. It was Shinichi's own fault, really. He should have mentioned that no one knew where he was going, and that that was the whole point. "Guess I can't blame you when it is partly my fault." He rubbed his forehead, trying his best to will an oncoming headache away. "It just puts me in a bad spot."

"Want more good news?"

"I don't think I can handle anymore, thanks."

"Tough." The other shrugged. "I was only asking cause I had to."

Shinichi rolled his eyes. "Do tell then."

"Kid is having another heist at the end of this week."

The detective was quick to frown. "He just had one a few days ago. Why so soon?"

"Don't know, but he'll probably say it's because of you."

Just what he needed. "Doesn't he always?" And suddenly, Shinichi was desperately missing the warmth he had woken up to that morning. That nice easy comfort of a person who expected nothing more from him than anything he was already willing to give.

"I don't want to say I told you so," The other began.

"But you have every right to." It would, after all, be a hundred percent true. Heiji _had_ told him so. He had absolutely told him that things were only going to go downhill. Shinichi just didn't listen. "This is what I get for breaking the heart of a thief."

Heiji frowned. "It wasn't entirely you're fault."

That was where the other was wrong. It had been Shinichi who approached the thief for a relationship. It had been Shinichi who kept enough secrets to make the entire affair last as long as it had. And it had been Shinichi who had called the whole thing off when he saw what he had done. Though, if he really wanted to get technical, it was all Conan's fault.

Because of Conan, Shinichi had to let go of everything he had obtained in his life. Beginning with his home and ending with Kyo. The detective had held off in doing so for as long as he could. The organization had taken everything from him. His body, his job, his house, he was not about to let them have Kyo too. The redhead and those few phone calls were one of the only things the detective could hang onto, and just about the only things that could reassure him of who he was anymore. Because every time Kyo picked up the phone, it wasn't to say hi to Conan, it was to say hi to Shinichi. However, times got too dangerous, and he eventually had to let the boy go lest he be put in danger's way.

That was a particularly dark moment in Shinichi's life. Without Kyo, there was this big hole in his heart that nobody else could seem to fix. It remained empty, bitterly swallowing whatever joy its owner tried to force into it. Nothing could assuage it. Nothing could soothe it. In an effort to at least fill it with something, anything, even if it wasn't what it heart wanted, Shinichi had sought out someone to share his loneliness with. He couldn't burden Heiji, wouldn't try to ask Ran, and he couldn't string along Kyo.

Even though he desperate wanted to, he just would take the risk. The cat would be in constant danger. Not only that, but how would he have taken to seeing Conan? What would he have thought of the foolish detective who had let himself be fed a poison that turned him into a child? If he didn't outright laugh, he certainly would have been mortified with what it all meant, what it would entail for him. Kyo would have had to accept a lot, more than he should have been able to. Shinichi didn't want to break him.

Then Kid had shown up, told him he knew who he really was, and things had spiraled from there. It was about as taboo as anyone could get without being punished for the real thing, and the moments where both had been actual sized detective and thief had been rare. Yet the relationship continued, and Shinichi kept lying to himself about how much it really meant to him. He wasn't heartless. He felt an attachment to the thief. However, he knew that he meant more to the thief than the thief truly meant to him.

After all, the relationship they had did nothing to stop Shinichi from taking the permanent cure Haibara had created, and it had not even crossed his mind the moment he returned to his rightful body. Kyo did. And suddenly, all Shinichi could think about was how much of a strain his relationship with Kid would put on things. How would the two of them ever be able to coexist in his life? He was always likely to offer one more attention than the other, and if that happened all hell would erupt before him with bloody casualties. He had to make a decision. Which did he treasure more? The thief who ran the night sky, or the cat whose eyes burned with a fire's intensity?

It had been no choice at all. He had broken things off with Kid only three days later, using the excuse that it had become too much for him to handle. He told the white bandit that his appearances at those full moon heists would stop in order to make things easier for the both of them. He asked the other not to fight it, and with that he walked off. And then, _and then_, a few days later a boy had bumped into him on the train. One who looked exactly like him with eyes a deep indigo.

Oh he knew it was Kid. Who else would have eyes like those, a way of speaking with his entire body, and refer to him as Tantei-Kun? Granted, a good portion of the general public had adopted that nickname when referring to him because of Kid. It was popular mostly in Ekoda, though a few Kid fans in Beika had taken to calling him that, but not many would say it to his face. The boy was too bold. He was too forward. There was no way he couldn't have been the elusive thief the detective had tried to leave behind.

He had tried to cream at the other, but the hopeful look in that boy's eyes made Shinichi stop the bitter demand to get as far away from him as he could. It was guilt, more than anything, which made him bite his tongue. So he accepted the offer of lunch that day, and soon after that he accepted the friendship of Kaito Kuroba. Days later he told Kid he would keep coming to heists as a favor, and could only partly bask in the joy of the other teenager.

But those favors to Kid, that guilt ridden duty to Kaito, coupled with what he had to do to appease Ran, and any solid attempts at hanging out with Heiji, were tiring him out. He was exhausted, most of the time barely able to function normally without some kind of sinking feeling forming in the pit his stomach. He was surprised he hadn't collapsed yet from all the pressure.

"What did his note say?" He asked tiredly, suddenly feeling as though he could fall down to the ground and sleep for weeks. "You did solve it right?"

Heiji held up three fingers. "From what I gathered, there will be three so called 'acts' to this heist." He put down one finger. "The first will involve me chasing him through one of the lower gardens down on the ground. If I manage to keep up with him long enough, I get a playing card." Another finger was brought down. "The second involves Hakuba running though the first few floors of the building in order to try and keep him from getting to the roof. If he wins, he gets another playing card and the heist jewel. If he loses, then it's up to you."

"To do what exactly?"

"To have a final showdown with Kid on the roof. It's your job to make sure he doesn't get away with it."

"Just great." What he wouldn't give to be back at Shigure's house right at that moment.

* * *

_A few days later_

Shinichi knew it was hopeless to dream for a smooth sailing encounter with the criminal. It had been a hopeless endeavor to wish for just one night where detectives could outsmart the thief they were chasing. Still, even though he shouldn't have held his breath, he still tried to hang on to whatever shred of hope he had when he stepped onto that night's crime scene.

Heiji had almost made him believe that wishing was not a lost cause. Kid was fast, but this night the Osakan had been just as quick as the one he followed. He burst through the traps, ignored the distractions, and managed to come out with an ace of clubs as his reward. However, he could not stop Kid from disappearing soon after the playing card had been given.

Then it was Hakuba's turn. He had had much more running to do, and a lot more traps to avoid than Heiji had. Shinichi thought it was rather deliberate on Kid's part, but hoped the Englishman could actually come out on top despite the challenges that faced him. He had been the most familiar with Kid, after all, so he should have had more experience with dodging whatever the thief threw his way. That meant he should have walked away with the card and jewel after a small struggle. He should have, but he didn't.

Which meant Shinichi actually had to appear before the thief that night.

"Any minute now," Hakuba growled out, once everyone had stopped to gather in one of the main security rooms. He was presently trying to pick out the batch of feathers from his hair. It was nearly impossible to do, since a large portion of superglue had been poured onto his head not two minutes before the fluffy white things had. It was his punishment, he had been told, for being so slow. "We'll have to leave it to you, Kudo-San."

Heiji grumbled an agreement. He too had had glue poured on his head, and his hat had been shoved on his head right after, leaving him with a cap connected semi permanently to his head. The only good thing to come from his misery was the ace of clubs Shinichi was now holding.

Shinichi mumbled in the affirmative, but looked less than eager about the whole thing. He had hoped that Hakuba would have been able to keep up with Kid long enough to get that second card. That way the heist would have ended early, with no need for the Heisei Holmes to make an appearance, and they could all have just gone home. Shinichi would have been able to avoid the magician in white for another few weeks, and all would have been glorious for a little while.

Of course, luck had never been on his side to begin with, so he supposed that begging for such an unlikely outcome was just asking for disappointment.

He sighed and looked at the watch of his wrist. Any minute now he would have to try to make use of its second function, a stun gun, and somehow find a way to make Kid hand over his latest prize without too much of a fuss. Just great.

"Excuse me, Kudo-San?"

The teenager turned when a voice called over to him from a few feet away. The men on the Kid taskforce usually avoided talking to him when it wasn't necessary, as Nakamori-Keibu hated it when the teenagers who barged onto his crime scenes got too chummy with his men. Curious as to why they were breaking protocol now of all times, he turned to face the one who had called him. The man was holing out Shinichi's cell phone, and it was vibrating rapidly.

Confused, he took the electronic device from the man's hand, wondering why he had not noticed it was missing until that exact moment. "Thanks." He quickly said to the officer, pressing the answer button without bothering to look at the screen. "Hello?"

"Shinichi-Kun! Thank goodness I was able to reach you."

Shinichi frowned at the slightly distressed voice. He knew he recognized it from somewhere, but it took him a few seconds longer than it should have to realize who it was. "Honda-San? What's the matter? You sound upset."

"Well, it's just, I didn't know what to do, and,"

"Breathe." He ordered gently. "Take a deep breath before you make yourself sick." He waved off the questioning glances from Hakuba and Heiji. He waited until he heard the girl on the other line do as he had instructed. "Good. Now tell me what's wrong."

"It's Kyo." Shinichi's heart stopped beating for a moment.

"What's wrong with him?" He asked urgently. "What happened?"

Heiji immediately began to question what was wrong, and Hakuba tore himself away from his hair long enough to do the same. Shinichi ignored them both, waiting instead for the girl who had called him in the midst of an emergency.

"He just got so sick all of a sudden."

"What do you mean?" He asked calmly, trying, if he could, to at least keep _her_ calm.

"He was fine one minute, and then he just collapsed."

The detective's eyes widened. "Is he okay? Did he hurt himself?"

"No. I managed to catch him and bring him to his bed." He would have to commend her properly later on for such a feat. Tohru looked like such a tiny little thing, and Kyo was no doubt twice as heavy as she was. It must have taken a lot of strength and determination to move him from one area to the other.

"What else?"

"He has a pretty bad fever and keeps talking in his sleep, that is, when he finally manages to fall asleep." The poor thing sounded like she was about to cry. "I didn't know who else to call. Shigure and Yuki aren't here,"

Of course. When Shinichi needed the dumb rat to be somewhere, he was conveniently absent.

"And I couldn't get in touch with Hatori,"

Why on earth not? What the heck was the other doing that was so important he couldn't answer his phone?

"And Kyo keeps calling out your name out in his sleep."

Shinichi blinked. "He does?"

"Well, I think it's you. He keeps saying 'Shin'."

The detective tried to fight the flush threatening to come over his cheeks. When they had been kids, Kyo had rarely ever called him by his full name. He usually referred to him as 'Shin', an affectionate nickname he had created when asked by Yukiko what he would call the brunette if he could. Shinichi had allowed it, not minding the name when it was the redhead who was saying it, but he had not heard it in so long. It felt oddly nice to hear it uttered again. He just wished he could hear Kyo say it himself.

"And…he keeps saying sorry to his father."

Any happy emotions Shinichi had experienced when hearing his old nickname died when Tohru finished speaking. Then his free hand tightened into a painful fist, his stomach suddenly feeling as though it was bursting forth with the acid inside of it. His mind became a sudden flurry of thoughts, making it difficult to think properly. Yet, even though his mind was now rebelling against him, Shinichi was certain of one thing.

"I'm on my way. Keep him comfortable until I get there."

"Really?" Came the overjoyed response. "Thank you so much!"

"No problem. I'll see you in a little bit, okay?"

Answering in the affirmative, Tohru quickly hung up the phone after a quick goodbye. Shinichi wasted no time in running to the nearest exit, and immediately heading for the closest elevator. Heiji and Hakuba, who had watched the entire conversation in confusion, followed after him. The other teenager was acting strangely, and it was beginning to worry them. If they simply let him leave now, without at least asking where he thought he was going, they just knew they'd end up regretting it. Who knew what would happen? Lucky for them they were able to catch him at an elevator currently rising from the first floor. It was a good thing the detective had not decided to go for the stairs on the other side of the hallway.

"Kudo." Heiji breathed out once he had stopped in front of the brunette who had his back turned to them. "Where the hell are you going?"

Hakuba, once he had caught his breath, tried to nod. "The heist isn't over yet."

It seemed as though that was the furthest thing from Shinichi's mind at the moment. "I've got somewhere I need to be."

"Now?"

"**Now**. As in, I should have been on a train ten minutes ago, now."

Heiji frowned. "You're up next Kudo. Kid is expecting you. He's going to be a little ticked off if you just up and leave."

"Then he shouldn't have dragged this thing out for so long!" The brunette growled out, around to face the other two detectives. The movement, and anger, had surprised the other two so much that they felt the need to take a few steps back. "If he wants to make these heists last forever, fine, but don't expect me to waste my time just because he feels like testing out a new game. Not when I have more important things to see to."

Hakuba held up his hands in a gesture of defense. "We're not going to stop you, but we are a little worried as to your current condition. Are you sure you should be going anywhere on your own?"

That managed to calm the boy down a bit. "I'm fine. A friend just really needs me right now."

A look of understanding passed through Heiji's eyes. "Is it him?"

Shinichi nodded. "He's sick, and it sounds like he's in pain. I know this is putting a lot of pressure on the two of you right now, but I just need to see him. I need to make sure he's okay."

Heiji shook his head. "Don't worry about. We'll handle things here." When the door to the elevator opened to reveal an empty compartment, the Osakan pushed his friend inside of it, waving off the confused look he received as Shinichi had done earlier. "Go. Take care of him. Call me when anything changes, neh?"

Shinichi nodded, a grateful smile staring back at the tan detective before the doors closed.

A minute or two passed on in silence before Hakuba turned to Heiji. "You realize we won't be leaving this place with our dignity intact now, don't you?"

"Yeah, but I think it's worth it. Kid is not the person he needs to see right now. Maybe this Kyo person is." He turned the other around and proceeded to push him towards the stairs. They were going to end up on the roof anyway. Might as well get a head start. "Let's just try to make it out of here in one piece."

Hakuba was quick to shove the other away, but continued on to their destination. "If that's at all possible to accomplish at this point."

Heiji just smiled, turning to look at the elevator once before taking in a deep breath. _"Sorry Kid, but you can't be his top priority anymore."_

* * *

**AN: Hey guys. New installment. Can I start off by saying I have nothing against Kid/Kaito the character? I don't hate him, and I am not against the KaiShin pairing. This is just the way the story turned out. You know how it is. Sometimes things just end up writing themselves. Anyway, enjoy, read, and review as always. Good day to you all. **

**Chapter brought to you by the song 'So Small' by Carrie Underwood. **


	7. Chapter 7

_Shinichi knew that he was not supposed to be there. Early on in their friendship, Kyo had told him that he __**could not ever**__ enter the lower areas of the house. It did not matter what the circumstances were. His mother would be furious, and the small detective could wind up in a very sticky situation. In fact, Kyo told him, if he did not see him at the window, it was better not to come in at all. They ran less a risk of getting caught that way. _

_Shinichi had had to obey that order all of three times. Once when Kyo's mother had decided to go on a cleaning spree that began in the attic, a second time when Kyo had been told of a doctor's appointment he could not miss, and a third time when the boy's mostly absent father had made an appearance, forcing the redhead to play a good host. Today marked the fourth occasion when the redhead had not shown up at the window to invite his friend in to play. _

_Yet, something was very different this time around. _

_There was a sick feeling deep in the pit of Shinichi's stomach. It seemed to twist and bend his insides whenever the thought of leaving came across his mind. Something was wrong, it told him, and he needed to get inside the house as quickly as possible. Otherwise he would quickly come to regret his decision. Besides, when had he ever listened to orders anyway? Not when he could help it, and certainly never when his instincts told him to do otherwise. And right now, those instincts were telling him to break down walls if that was what it took to get inside the quaint little home. _

_His upbringing screamed against the action. Kyo had told him not to do that, and when had the other ever asked anything of him? Never. All Kyo had ever asked for was the brunette's company and a listening ear. It would be incredibly rude to go against his one wish just because of some stupid feeling. _

_Still, that stupid feeling made Shinichi open the unlocked attic window, made him quietly sneak into the attic, and made him silently leave its safety cocoon for the second floor. Kyo said that was where his room was and that would be the best place to begin looking for him. _

_Shinichi told himself that he would not be there very long. Just ten minutes, tops. Just long enough to ensure that the redhead was okay. Just long enough to assuage the feeling in his stomach and ease his mind. Then the proper apologies would be made, followed by a quick farewell, and a promise to return the next day. Shinichi just needed to see Kyo. He needed to make sure that nothing bad had happened. He just needed some reassurance._

_There were a total of five doors on the second floor; the young child was quick to learn. So far he had only checked four of them out. Two belonged to bedrooms, one belonged to a bathroom, and one was attached to a very cramped closet filled with funny looking toys and clothes. The closet was the only thing had made him pause in his frantic search for his best friend. The toys inside all had very deformed looking cats drawn on of them, the clothes having stitches of the creature haphazardly sewn on, falling or otherwise being brought to their demise. Shinichi could only look at them for a total of three minutes before he scoffed and closed the door. Someone in the house had a very disturbing relationship with the animal. _

_When he was down to the last room, Shinichi had all but given up hope of finding his friend. Other than the occasional rattle of the windows, the house was absolutely silent. What normal household, complete with one rambunctious child, was ever this quiet? Perhaps the family had gone out somewhere? Kyo couldn't have possibly stayed in the house at all hours of the day. He would have had to go outside eventually, and no doubt his parents had noticed the unusual amount of time he had recently spent in the attic. Maybe they had taken him out somewhere to get him out of the house? It was plausible._

_The door opened before he had time to stop himself, and just to say he had, he took a quick peek inside. To his shock, there was Kyo lying still in his bed. Shinichi frowned and stepped closer into the room, cautiously looking around for anyone who might be hiding somewhere in the immediate vicinity. The coast was clear, and once he was sure of it he made a beeline for the bed. _

_Kyo opened one eye when he felt the mattress dip next to him. "Didn't I tell you not to come in here when I didn't show up at the window?"_

_Shinichi nodded._

"_Thanks for paying attention."_

_The brunette ignored the slight attitude. On any other day that comment might have hurt, but the detective could tell that Kyo was not at 100%. If anything, he looked like he might keel over at any second. His breaths were short and ragged, seeming as though his lungs were rebelling against him with a selfish desire to force him to stop breathing all together. There was sweat on his brow, even though the day was one of the chilliest they had had all month, and with every slight breath another bead rolled off onto the mattress from the side of his head. It was obvious from the boy's constant shifting that he was uncomfortable. His body was shaking slightly, not really shivering, and he struggled not to curl into himself. Kyo looked as though he was in pain and Shinichi didn't know what to do about the situation._

_So he figured it was best to ask. "What's wrong?"_

_Kyo tried to laugh a little. "I'm sick. Wasn't that obvious, detective?" He coughed, and after a minute he tearfully looked up at the brunette. "I'm sorry, that was rude. I don't mean to be-"_

"_Shhh." Shinichi whispered gently, moving aside damp hair from the other's face. "You don't feel good. It's okay to get a little mad when you're sick. Don't apologize. Just tell me where it hurts."_

"_Everywhere," Kyo coughed again. This time he could not help but curl onto his side._

_Shinichi adjusted his position on the bed, placing his friend's head on his lap and running a hand gently through the bright orange locks. "Does your head hurt?"_

_Kyo nodded. "And I keep sweating, even though it's supposed to be freezing in here."_

_It __**should**__ have been freezing in that room given the current temperature outside and the other rooms in the house. But for some reason, now that the brunette stopped to think about it, the room felt very warm. Too warm actually. Far too hot for anybody to be properly comfortable in. That was a problem. "What about your throat? Your voice sounds a little raspy."_

"_It is." The child said miserably. "I've been coughing all night."_

_No wonder he seemed so exhausted. He must not have been able to sleep if he kept nearly hacking up a lung every few minutes. "Well, are you hungry, thirsty maybe?"_

_Kyo had to think about it for a moment. "I tried eating something this morning, but I just threw it back up again. And I guess I'm a little thirsty, but I'm too tired to get up."_

_That left one very important question up in the air. "Where's your mom? Why isn't she taking care of you?"_

_Kyo did manage to laugh just then. It still sounded raspy, and rather painful, so how he was able to pull the action off was a miracle in and of itself at the moment. "She's gone."_

_Shinichi frowned. "What do you mean gone?"_

"_She left me here after breakfast. She won't be back for a few days."_

_Shinichi could hardly believe what he was hearing. "What? How could she leave you here by yourself when you're like this?"_

_Kyo shrugged. "She probably doesn't even know I'm by myself."_

_All that answer did was make the detective even more confused. "I don't understand."_

_Kyo hummed in response. "I didn't think you would. Do you remember when we first met, and I told you that my mom never wanted me to have friends?"_

_Shinichi nodded._

"_Everyone keeps telling me that it's because she loves me too much. If that's true, then my dad is the complete opposite. He doesn't love me at all."_

_The brunette felt a lump appear in his throat, and suddenly it was very hard to swallow. _

"_My father would prefer for me to go out of the house, to make terrible friends, and never come back. He wishes I didn't exist, and sometimes I think he just wants me to die."_

_The very thought of such a thing made Shinichi want to cry. If Kyo died, if he had never been, what kind of world would that have been for Shinichi? He didn't want to know, didn't want to think about it. The very possibility made him feel sick._

"_So he told mom that she shouldn't be around me when I'm sick. She'd catch it too. He promised he'd take care of me and let her know when I'm better. He left about twenty minutes after she did."_

_Shinichi's blood was boiling. So those were the man's intentions? He was going to leave his child in a house, by himself, when he could barely move, and come back later to discover the boy dead? Then he would probably pretend to play the grieving father and husband, showing supposed 'strength' by moving on from his loss quicker than anyone imagined. Oh, he wasn't going to get away with this. Shinichi would see to that the second he returned home. For now, he had to see to more important matters._

"_How long will he be gone?"_

_Kyo shrugged. "A couple of days, I think. I don't remember."_

_That was good enough for Shinichi. "Do you guys have a phone?"_

"_In the kitchen." Red eyes curiously looked up to a pair of deep sea blue irises. "Why?" _

_Shinichi smiled reassuringly. "I just need to make a quick phone call. Will you be alright by yourself for a few minutes?"_

_Kyo nodded tiredly. "Sure."_

* * *

"_Yes mother, yes mother, yes mother!" Shinichi could hardly keep his voice calm. Honestly, his mother had to pick __**now**__ of all times to ask a million questions about his whereabouts? She never did this the dozens of times her son ran off to play with a kid in an attic. Granted, she didn't know that her son was even playing in an attic to begin with, but that was beside the point. _

"_Are you sure your friends parents are going to be alright with this? It seems awfully last minute, and I don't even know what you'll be doing over there."_

_Shinichi tried not to sigh. "Yes mother, they agreed. My friend and I are only going to play in the house. Maybe explore his attic for ghosts." Sure, make the endeavor sound childish, that'll fool her. _

"_You don't even have a spare change of clothes. Why don't you come home, grab a few things, and I'll drive you back?"_

_Not an option. "I'll be fine! My friend and I are about the same size, so he can lend me some clothes. And his bed is big enough for the two of us, so I won't have any problems when it's time to go to sleep. Honestly, you and dad don't have to worry."_

"_Alright, Shin-Chan. Just make sure to remember your manners and be a good house guest. When should I pick you up?"_

_Again, not an option. "You don't have to. I'll come home when we're done."_

"_Shin-Chan, I'm not going to let you walk home by yourself after not seeing you for two days."_

_No, he figured she wouldn't. That would make things too easy. So he would have to stoop a bit lower to get what he wanted. "Mom! Stop embarrassing me in front of my friends! I'm not a little kid anymore!"_

_She laughed at him. It was one those infuriating mother laughs that signaled the silliness of whatever child was closest. Normally it was annoying to Shinichi, who never did anything to warrant it. However, it was normally a clear sign that he was going to get what he wanted if he held back on having a temper tantrum._

"_Alright, Shin-Chan, you win. I'll let you have your way just this once. But the next time you have a sleepover, you have to let me know all the details beforehand. Okay?"_

_Shinichi could barely contain his excitement as he hurriedly rushed his mother off the phone. He was lucky enough to get away with such a blatant lie on such short notice. Yukiko was not as book smart as her husband was, but she was every bit as cunning and clever as her male counterpart. Especially when it came to her son. Sometimes she was able to catch her child in a lie before it even had time to form on the tip of his tongue. It was a hassle trying to one up her, as it would normally take days of planning and perfecting whatever acting genes his mother had passed on, and Shinichi had his suspicions on why he had been able to do so this easily this time around, but he would think about that later. _

_He set the phone back down on the receiver and jumped off of the chair he had used to reach it. His eyes then scanned the kitchen. Cupboards, cabinets, a fridge, a fairly large sink area with a cutting board, and various other cooking measurement tools that every house maker would have on standby met his eyes. Everything about the room was as neat and as well put together as any televised kitchen could hope to be. The room was most likely often functioning as a well oiled food making machine. Kyo's mother was probably one of those women who had just about every obscure food item on hand just in the event that it would someday come in handy. In fact, the detective was counting on that._

_One f the things Shinichi had been able to weasel out of his mother before he had hung up was a recipe for miso soup. Yukiko would always serve it to her boys when one of them ended up sick in bed. It was usually enough to do the trick and get them back into action. However, when Shinichi had done a quick search of the shelves he could easily reach, there didn't seem to be anything he could whip up instantly. In fact, as he looked through the lower levels of the fridge, he realized that there wasn't anything instant anywhere. The Sohma's apparently had to make everything from scratch. It wasn't too much of a problem for Shinichi, except he didn't have the instructions to make the soup dedicated to memory. _

_With them now in his hand, he was sure he could come up with something decent. He was not leaving that kitchen until he did. _

* * *

_It had taken the better part of the hour, but Shinichi had finally managed to make an edible batch of miso soup. It was nowhere near as good as his mother's was, but it would do for now. Though, as soon as he got back to his house he was going to spend quite a few hours, several times a week, practicing his culinary skills. The ones he had now left much to be desired._

_For the moment he simply placed a soup filled bowl on a tray, added on a glass of cranberry juice, and carefully made his way up the stairs back to Kyo's room. He wasn't surprised to see the cat dozing off in his bed, though he was slightly shocked to see that the other had managed to sit up by himself. _

_Kyo smiled when he caught sight of the brunette, suddenly looking a bit more alert than he had a few seconds ago. "I was afraid you got lost down there."_

_His voice was still raspy, but it seemed like the redhead could go a few minutes without coughing. That was definitely an improvement. "Are you feeling any better?"_

_Kyo nodded and patted the spot next to him on the bed. "Sleep helps." He looked on curiously as Shinichi did his best to get up onto the bed without spilling anything on the tray. Kyo had to lend him a hand before the boy was able to sit down comfortably. "What's all this for?"_

_Shinichi set the tray on his friend's lap. "It's for you."_

_Kyo looked down at the food and drink. "You made this for me?"_

_The detective nodded. "My mom usually gives me this same meal whenever I feel sick. Well, she doesn't give me cranberry juice, she makes me tea with lemon, but you didn't have that in your kitchen. The only tea you had was black."_

_Kyo nodded. "That's what _my_ mom gives me whenever I'm sick. That and some chicken soup."_

_Shinichi blushed. "So, this was wrong then?" It occurred to him that, despite his wide range of knowledge on a wide variety of subjects, medicine had been carelessly overlooked. He knew next to nothing about the way a human would be treated if they were ill. He just knew the bare bones of first aid and common medical practices. Meaning that he had just showed his friend that he was not nearly as smart as he claimed to be. It was nearly humiliating. _

_But Kyo smiled and shook his head. "It's not wrong, just different."_

_Shinichi wasn't sure if 'different' was just a very polite way of saying it was 'wrong', but he kept his mouth shut as his friend took that first tentative bite. _

_The boy seemed surprisingly pleased with the meal. He gave a pleasant little hum, and then went back for a few more spoonfuls before speaking again. "It's good."_

_Shinichi frowned at the surprised tone. "You sound so shocked."_

"_I don't like miso. Not usually."_

_The detective's face was on fire in an instant. "You don't?" At that moment Shinichi sincerely wanted to crawl into a deep hole and never come out again. Some genius he was. He should have been smart enough to ask for the boy's preferences before making out a fool out of himself by cooking something that Kyo wouldn't have liked. _

_But once again the redhead reassured him with a smile. "I shouldn't be surprised though. Any time I think I know something, you turn my world around in the coolest of ways." He slurped up another spoonful of soup. "I guess if I ever said I hated miso, I was lying."_

_That did not remove the flush from Shinichi's face. "Are you mad?"_

_Kyo blinked. "Why would I be mad?"_

_Because he had been fed a food he despised when he was feeling about as well as a dog that had been kicked when it was already on the ground. "I should have asked you what you wanted. I just assumed…but, I'm sorry." _

_The brunette was surprised when a hand gently patted him on the top of his head. Blues eyes looked up to see Kyo smiling at him with all the warmth that the sun could ever hope to offer. Right then, Shinichi would have volunteered to be humiliated a hundred times over for the same stupid mistakes if he could somehow immortalize that expression. _

"_I don't think there's anything you could do to make me stay mad at you for very long." The sick boy told him. "Especially not something as sweet as this."_

_It didn't seem all that sweet to Shinichi. Sweet would have been getting things right the first time. "But-"_

_Kyo placed a finger atop his friend's lips. "You made me food, brought me a drink, and voluntarily decided to take care of me despite my bad attitude. My own parent's won't even do that much and it's their job."_

_Shinichi could feel his face heating up again. And just when he had managed to force it away too. "You're too nice."_

_Kyo shook his head after another bite. "You're just too hard on yourself. It can be cute, but I like it better when you think you know everything."_

_The brunette managed a glare. "I do not think I know it all."_

_The redhead rolled his eyes. "Yes you do." He finished off the rest of the soup in one long satisfying gulp. After taking another sip of his juice, he turned his full attention back to the brunette sitting next to him. It's okay though. Most of the time, I think you know everything too."_

_Now there was a very pronounced pout. "You're mean."_

_Kyo chuckled. "Cheer up! I just gave you a compliment."_

"_It's more like half a compliment with a good dose of underlying insults."_

_The other boy shrugged. His glass soon joined the empty bowl. _

_Shinichi focused his attention on it. "Did you like the drink at least? I didn't think it would be in your fridge if you didn't." Then again, assuming things was apparently not his greatest forte. _

"_I do." Kyo said to the detective's relief. "I just don't get to drink it often."_

"_Why not?"_

"_My mom only keeps it around for my father when he's here for more than a few hours."_

_Shinichi's blood suddenly ran cold at the mere mention of Kyo's father. Shinichi had never met the man, but he had a sneaking suspicion that the older Sohma was one of the lowest forms of life on earth. After all, what kind of real man left their child sick and unable to care for himself? He shouldn't have ever been created, in Shinichi's humble opinion, and had he not donated half of Kyo's DNA, the brunette would have wished that such a person had never even existed. _

"_I'm changing the subject now." The detective said blandly, just a hint of frustration lacing his voice. _

_Kyo laughed in response. "Good idea. What do you want to talk about?"_

"_How about what we're going to do for my visit?"_

_The redhead frowned. "I can't do much when I'm sick. We could read something, or draw maybe?"_

_Shinichi smiled brightly. "Whatever you want to do is fine. We'll find something to amuse us for the next two days."_

"_Two days?" Kyo's eyes went wide. "You're…you…"_

_Shinichi kissed the other's forehead. "I won't leave you here by yourself when you're not well. I'll stay with you so you don't get lonely."_

_And as they had done so many times before, they embraced so tightly it could have hurt, yet so earnestly all they could do was smile._

* * *

Shinichi did not know all the details that led him to the Sohma home, whether he had actually take that train or had just run there, but when he showed up at the front door, he was panting and so out of breath that Tohru nearly called an ambulance.

"I'm okay," He assured her once he was able to speak. Admittedly, it wasn't until he was handed about three glasses of water and allowed just as many minutes to catch his breath. "I'm just a little tired." He looked up to the girl in front of him. "Is he alright?"

She nodded slowly. "He finally fell asleep a little while ago. He still has a fever, but he's not screaming out in pain."

That was a relief. "Can I see him?"

Tohru, bless the girl, wasted no time in taking the detective to his bedridden friend. Silently as a mouse, gently as a dove, Shinichi walked over to the side of his best friend's bed. Kyo was sweating, shifting, mumbling incoherently from time to time. Though not in pain, he seemed uneasy with the atmosphere around him. Without thinking, Shinichi ran a hand over the sleeping boy's forehead, shifting aside damp hair and wiping his cool hand over a heated brow. Kyo calmed almost instantly.

Tohru relaxed considerably. "It's like he knows you're here."

Shinichi smiled. "I'm glad I could bring him some comfort." He then turned to the girl beside him, eyes determined and pleading all at the same time. "Will you help me with something? I think it might be enough to perk him right up."

She nodded vigorously. "Of course. What is it you need?"

"Ingredients for miso soup, and some cranberry juice."

* * *

**Authors Note: Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night. May your days be so merry and your nights so star bright. And if you all forgive my poor attempts at poetry, here's your new chapter to hopefully keep you all merry. **

**Until next time!**


	8. Chapter 8

_He had transformed. Out of all the things that could have happened on Shinichi's short sleepover visit, he just had to transform. All things considered, Kyo should have seen it coming. Hatori had certainly warned him about this occurrence often enough. When you were sick, your body's immune system was weakened considerably. Its main focus was on putting the body back into a proper system of good health. Meanwhile the curse that the zodiac members lived with was only concerned with its survival. It would therefore take over the body, becoming the only body system capable of being properly healed, and often would not allow the cursed being to return to human form until survival was certain. _

_When you were sick enough, you were nearly guaranteed to turn into the animal you had grown to despise. You could try to fight it. You could try to avoid it with every precaution you could think of. Either way, the effort was always going to be a goodhearted waste of breath. If the body could not fight something, you were not going to do any better._

_With the drastic change in size, Kyo had to now look up in order to see Shinichi. Though, the boy turned kitten was less than eager to do so. What would he see if he were to look? Fear? Disbelief? Disgust? He wouldn't be able to take it. How would he be able to stomach it? How could he handle his best friend looking at him in disgust, fear taking over the soft affection that used to be there? It would kill him._

_Shinichi could only look at the kitten standing before him, surrounded by a pile of clothes Kyo was wearing two seconds prior. He couldn't quite get his mouth to function properly, and so it went through quite a lengthy process where it opened and closed without any trace of sound. After doing a dashingly good impression of a fish for about five minutes, he finally found his mouth forming a single word. _

"_Kyo?"_

_The cat could not look at him anymore. That voice, even with that one simple word seeming to question what exactly it was supposed to sound like, was too much to take. He needed to run. He needed to get away. He would think about the specifics later. He just needed to get somewhere else __**now**__._

_Well, he tried at the very least. He neglected to take into the account some hidden law of the universe that stated that the amount of panic you held in any given situation was directly proportional to how likely you were to fail in your attempts to flee. He had also forgotten the rule that said you were almost guaranteed to trip over anything in your given vicinity the more desperately you were trying to run away from someone. So, because Kyo had ignored the hidden laws of the universe, he tripped over his piled clothes and fell flat on the floor. He still tried to get up to make an escape, but his body was too tried to let him. It decided it was fine where it was. Again, when the body decided, you were pretty much stuck with its decision. _

_He let out a pitiful little mewl, staying perfectly still so as to not cause his body any more harm. He immediately heard hurried footsteps, and then he felt himself being gently picked up. A moment later he looked into concerned blue eyes._

"_Are you okay?"_

_To which Kyo miserably replied, "No!" He then began sniffling._

_Shinichi, obviously panicked by the appearance of any form of crying, tried rocking the cat in his arms. He wasn't quite sure if that was the right thing to do to comfort people, but he had seen his mother do it when a baby was crying. Same principal applied here, right? Probably not, but he hoped the thought of the gesture was enough of a comfort. _

_After a few tense minutes of silence and awkward rocking, Shinichi decided that it was probably best to say something to his scared friend. "Are you okay?" No, that was a dumb question. "Do I need to call a doctor?" What would he even say if one showed up? 'Hi, my best friend turned into a talking cat, can you turn him back?'_

_Kyo spared him the possibility of the ridiculous situation. "Bad idea!" He started coughing, or, rather, mewling. Shinichi only thought it was coughing because the boy turned cat's body would convulse slightly like one would usually do when overtaken by a coughing fit. "I can't let anybody see me like this!"_

_Shinichi held back on saying that he was seeing his best friend turn into a cat, but he had a feeling that that would not be very appropriate right at the moment. "Uh...then what do I do?"_

"_Not run away?" It was a meager and pitiful little request, and had Shinichi been a girl he might have squealed and tightly squeezed the kitten to his chest. _

_However, he was a very mature young man who knew that squealing would have made Kyo's headache worse, and squeezing was definitely one of the more painful ways of showing affection. So he very gently hugged the boy turned kitten a bit tighter, just a bit, and hummed some terribly off beat tune. He was actually quite unaware of what the melody was and he had a sneaking suspicion that he had merely made it up two seconds prior, but he needed to do something to keep his mouth shut and away from bad topics of conversation. Humming seemed like the best option. _

_Kyo found himself feeling comforted by the vibrations he felt, being so close to the detective's chest. "Are you okay?"_

"_Uh-huh," Shinichi knew he sounded squeaky and very doubtful, but he had no time to care. "Will you tell me the truth if I ask you a question?"_

"_Yes."_

"_Are you dying?"_

_Kyo actually finally managed to look Shinichi in the eye. He was surprised to see blue eyes looking worriedly down at him. "What?" He shook his head. "No, I'm not dying."_

"_So...this is normal? There is nothing about this situation that requires immediate medical attention?"_

_The boy needed to learn to speak English when Kyo was not feeling well. It was difficult to translate genius when his head was still pounding so strongly. "Yeah, it's a normal thing for my family. Some of us, not all of us, just some, turn into these animals sometimes. It's not bad, just a little different?"_

_Shinichi plopped down to the floor. He swallowed up spit and tried to smile as honestly as he could. But he was nervous and Kyo could easily tell. "Okay. I can handle that. This is normal." He said mostly to himself. "This is normal."_

_It was then that Kyo realized that it was not the fact that he had turned into a cat that was bothering Shinichi. It was the simple fact that Shinichi just did not understand the process by which it was done. That was an odd little quirk about the small detective. He could deal with just about anything. Murder, tragedies, walks of life, anything that the world could throw at him. He just had to understand it first. Motives, circumstances, how things played out, all things of that nature needed to be explained. Without them, the brunette was lost and upset. He just needed to know how; he only wanted to know why. After those facts had been gathered he was much more comfortable in the situation._

_Meaning all Kyo had to do to remedy the problem at hand was to tell the boy what little he knew about his curse. "I'll tell you about it."_

_Shinichi blinked in confusion. "Huh?" His voice was still very nervous, and Kyo wished he would gain back the confidence that the Sohma was used to. "What did you say?"_

"_I'll tell you all about this, this curse, so that you can understand what's going on a bit better. If you want to hear it, that is."_

_Shinichi nodded. "Yeah, I would."_

"_But you have to promise me something first."_

"_What is it?"_

"_Please," His voice was begging, Kyo knew it was, but this was important. The time for pleading was extremely appropriate for this given situation. "Just don't run away after I finish telling you."_

_Shinichi laughed. This time the sound was sincere and free of lingering doubt. "If I haven't run screaming at the sight of a talking cat, I'm pretty sure nothing else is going to chase me off."_

_Kyo smiled. Perhaps, he thought to himself, this transformation had been a blessing in disguise. At least, for now, there was one less secret he had to keep from a person most dear to him. "Alright, so, here's the thing,"_

* * *

Kyo could smell the sweat coming down his own brow. He assumed that he still had a fever, and that the heat radiating from his entire body was the cause of said body's sudden rise in internal temperature. The room around him was cold, though, giving a nice contrast to the heat of his flesh. Someone must have opened the window, allowing a comfortable form of breathable air into his bedroom. Did someone open a window for him? Was it Tohru? She had been the one to miraculously bring him into his room, right? She must have been desperately trying to make him comfortable enough to survive until Hatori could make it to the house. Did she even call Hatori, or did he imagine that pleading phone call?

His thoughts were interrupted by a familiar scent. The broth of a favorite soup coupled with the sweet tangy smell of a loved drink. He recognized it almost immediately as his long time sickbed meal, and the realization brought forth the image of the boy it was often associated with.

"Shinichi?"

A moment later the redhead felt a cool hand on his forehead. His body relaxed instinctively at the touch, and a content sigh escaped through his lips. He could somehow tell, even without opening his eyes, that the other boy was smiling.

"How'd you know it was me?"

Kyo smiled. "I caught the scent of death in the air."

The hand on his head was removed for a short second before it returned to flick him on the forehead. "Watch it." The voice said playfully.

"Sorry." At the sound of an apology, the brunette returned his hand to Kyo's head and began running through the red locks. The feeling of gentle fingers running through his hair was extremely soothing to the sick cat.

"Are you going to open your eyes?"

Kyo hummed softly. "What kind of prize do I get if I do?"

"Some food and a drink that might make you feel better."

A red eye popped open. He knew the answer he would receive, but he asked anyway. "What kind?"

Shinichi smiled. "Miso soup and cranberry juice. Do you feel up to it?"

Kyo tried pushing himself up until he was able to sit up. He was able to get onto his elbows before the strain of his movements proved to be too much for him. "Oi, I need help."

Shinichi placed a hand on the redhead's waist and hook his other arm around his friend's shoulders. With a bit of help from the bedridden boy the detective was able into hoist his friend to a sitting position. Once Kyo settled himself against the headboard, he was handed a tray full of his favorite sick meal.

Kyo looked up to Shinichi and offered a grateful smile. "Thanks for this, Shinichi."

The other returned his expression. "Don't worry about it." His eyes sobered a bit. "You scared me half to death when I found out you were sick."

Kyo took a spoonful of soup into his mouth. It was a lot better than the last time he had tasted the dish. Shinichi had improved his culinary skills. "I'm surprised you're here. How'd you find out about it?"

"Tohru-Chan called me and let me know."

Kyo smirked at the change in address. "_Tohru-Chan_?"

Shinichi huffed and turned to the side to hide the flush on his face. "She wouldn't let me call her by her last name." He turned back to Kyo, eyes serious and stern. "You should really apologize to her once you feel better. She was so worried about you she nearly made _herself_ sick."

The redhead frowned. "She was?" Now he felt guilty. "I never meant for her to get so upset."

Shinichi's gaze softened. "What happened? I was only gone for a few days. How did you manage to get so sick in so little time?"

Kyo swallowed another spoonful of soup before answering. "It was just a cold. I didn't even realize I was that bad until I was two feet away from the floor."

Shinichi ran a hand through his head and plopped down on the bed. "How could you not notice?" Blue eyes pleaded for an answer. "It's not like you to take such poor care of yourself."

Kyo sighed. That desperation to understand was still very much present in the detective's core. What could the cat say to soothe his friend this time? "I got too distracted by your visit. I was just so happy to see you; I guess I ignored what was going on with my own body in order to spend one more second with you before you left again." He set sad eyes on his friend. "Are you mad?"

Shinichi looked like he _wanted_ to be mad, but in the end he just sighed and shook his head. "Just scared. Do me a favor and keep yourself relatively healthy from now on?"

Kyo gave a toothy grin. "I'll try."

Shinichi rolled his eyes, but he too was smiling. "Brat."

"Know it all."

The detective snorted before standing up from the bed. "I have to go help Tohru-Chan in the kitchen. Are you going to be alright on your own for a while?"

Kyo waved his hand. "Go on. I've got all I need." Yet the other did not move. "I'll be fine! Go clean!"

Shinichi shuffled his feet and turned his head to the side. Kyo wondered what was making the boy act so nervous. "I have a small request to ask of you."

The redhead blinked. "A request?"

Shinichi nodded. "Just a small one. It won't be that hard to fulfill."

"What is it?"

The detective finally found the nerve to look back to Kyo, face slightly red in the cheeks. "Do you think you could start calling me Shin again, like you used to when we were kids?"

Kyo felt his own face flame up. He quickly took several large gulps of juice to cover up his embarrassment. Where on earth had that question come from? He hadn't used that name since the day after he became a teenager.

"Tohru-Chan said you kept calling me that in your sleep." The detective helpfully informed him, making the red on Kyo's face deepen.

How embarrassing was that?

"You don't have to call me that." Shinichi was quick to assure him. "I'm not going to force you to. I just liked the name. So..." He looked like he wanted to say more, but at last he shook his head and made a beeline for the door.

Why was the room suddenly so hot? Was his fever returning? Come to think of it, had it even gone away yet?

"Shin," Kyo called out, head bent low, causing the detective to look back to the boy. "After you're done in the kitchen, be sure to come back for these dishes. Shigure will throw a fit if I leave them lying around."

When Kyo finally thought it safe to look up, he was met with brightly shining blue eyes and a smile that could somehow make Kyo burn with an intensity completely unrelated to his fever. Then, Shinichi disappeared into the hall and the Sohma saw fit to breathe correctly again. Being sick made his body act very strangely indeed.

* * *

Hours later, Kyo awoke to an unfamiliar but pleasant smelling cologne. His tired mind informed him that he had finished his meal moment after Shinichi had left his side, placed the dishes on the bedside table, and had managed to fall into a somewhat deep and peaceful slumber before the brunette had a chance to return. It was a bit of a shame. Kyo wanted to talk to him some more, maybe rid them of the awkwardness that bringing up and old nickname had caused. Had the detective gone home when he had seen that his temporary charge had fallen asleep?

Upon opening his eyes, Kyo realized that, no, Shinichi had not left. He had apparently decided to make himself comfortable and settle in next to his friend. Kyo wondered how his bed could always be so comfy with two people snuggled up against each other even though it was only made for one person. He also wondered how Shinichi had managed to sneak into his bed and get Kyo to move over enough so that the two of them could actually sleep next to each other in relative comfort.

A soft buzzing noise brought the cat's attention towards the brunette's jacket pocket. A soft glow emanated from the light blue fabric, bringing to light a small square screen. Normally the two things did not bother him too much. They were small and insignificant. Sometimes Kyo did not even notice them when they occurred around him. Today was different. Today those vibrations seemed to be the same as the ringing of a large grandfather clock. How did Shinichi not hear it?

Two minutes of constant buzzing, later and Shinichi's refusal to awaken from his comfortable state of sleep, Kyo decided that enough was enough and that there was one thing left to do. Regardless of how awkward this decision would be that noise needed to be stopped. Now. So, after taking a small amount of time to collect himself, he reached into Shinichi's pocket to reach for the phone. Without even thinking it about it, he pressed the receiver button once the device was in his hand and placed it against his ear.

"Hello?" He commended himself for sounding so calm when he was so very tired. "Can I help you?"

"How cruel of you, Tantei-Kun," A voice cooed out. "Leaving in the middle of a heist like that without warning. How mean."

Kyo blinked. He made a mental note to never again answer a phone after he had just woken up. His ability to understand the flow of conversation diminished with a lack of sleep. He tried several times to make sense of what the person on the other end of the phone had said, but in the end he couldn't get a grip on what it was that the other wanted. So he gave up and simply asked, "Excuse me?"

A soft hum was heard. "You sound so surprised." Kyo didn't have to act to sound the part. "Did you really think I'd just let this go? Not too great a deduction there, is it detective?"

The voice was teasing, but something about it made Kyo uneasy. He didn't like the confidence in the voice, harmless though it may have seemed. Something about the underlying attitude it stemmed from irritated the cat in reasons he was not yet sure of. Just who was this guy? "Who is this?"

There was silence. "Funny, Tantei-Kun, you almost sound serious."

It finally occurred to Kyo that this was _Shinichi's_ phone, and that was who the caller thought he was. It amused the redhead slightly that they had been speaking for a few minutes already, and yet the other person could not determine that he was speaking to the teenager he had called for. Kyo supposed that their voices sounded similar on the phone. "I'm sorry, but I'm not who you're looking for." He smiled at the figure sleeping next to him. "Shin can't come to the phone right now."

"Shin?" The puzzled voice asked.

It made Kyo glad that he could not see the person he was currently speaking to. His face was as red as a tomato and the teenage Sohma could not be anymore mortified. He remembered, somewhat bitterly, why he had stopped referring to Shinichi by that affectionate nickname in the first place. It had been a cute address when they were children, as well as a testament to how much he had loved his best friend. However, the older Kyo became, the more that innocent name seemed to inadvertently insinuate. After one too many instances of the detective being mistaken for his boyfriend, Kyo started using the boy's full name.

Once that nickname came out of Kyo's mouth, it was very difficult for it to stop coming out.

"Shinichi Kudo." Kyo said after a moment. "Famous detective? Modern day Holmes? That's who you're looking for, right?" He didn't wait for an answer. "He can't come to the phone right now. He's kind of unconscious."

Perhaps unconscious might have been a poor word to use. It certainly was not said in the way this person on the phone had taken it. When he spoke again, his voice was suddenly filled with a calm anger. "What have you done to Tantei-Kun?"

Kyo, for his part, did not appreciate the accusation in that voice. The other made it sound as though he had kidnapped Shinichi for some vile purpose. "Nothing." He said irritably. "He's right here and he's just fine. He's simply indisposed of right now."

Kyo swore he heard the other growl. "I want to speak to him. Now."

Pushy much? Who did this guy think he was? Kyo had half a mind to say 'no' and hang up. It certainly was what he _wanted_ to do. But he got the feeling that such a thing would be a mistake. This person seemed like the type to call thirty times even if a phone was off, and the redhead had a feeling that ignoring him was a lot more trouble than it was really worth. "Please hold on, you highness." He spat out sarcastically.

The hand that wasn't holding onto the cell phone gently shook the sleeping detective. Shinichi mumbled something in his sleep, but refused to wake up. Kyo shook the boy harder. Still, Shinichi refused to stray into the world of consciousness.

"Shin," Kyo called out softly yet firmly. "I need you to get up."

Shinichi opened one eye, and somehow managed to glare with the other still closed. "Why?"

Kyo held up the phone for the other to see. "Someone wants to speak to you."

"I'm tired."

Kyo rolled his eyes. "I know, I am too. So be a good boy and speak to this jerk so that we can both go beddy bye."

Shinichi groaned and tried to fuse himself into the mattress. "Don't wanna."

Kyo laughed. "Are you seriously this tired?"

Shinichi hummed in the affirmative. "And cold too. So hang up and give me back my human furnace."

Kyo purposely chuckled into the phone. For some reason he found himself reveling in the aggravated sounds his actions received. "This person seems really eager to talk to you. It'll be impolite to ignore them." Though, a part of Kyo really hoped that Shinichi wouldn't care.

The detective sighed. "Can we compromise?"

He was just too cute to say no too. "Sure."

"Give me back my furnace and I'll answer the phone."

Kyo rolled his eyes, but he already knew he would comply with the request. Without a single fuss the redhead lowered himself back down to the bed, handing over the phone before tucking his head under Shinichi's chin. He could not help but feel sleepy at the arrangement.

The detective suddenly felt so comfortable, he just wanted to fall back asleep. However, he forced himself to place his cell phone next to his ear. "Shinichi Kudo speaking."

"Tantei-Kun! Are you all right?"

Shinichi seriously hoped that Kyo didn't feel how his body tensed at the sound if that voice. "How did you get this number?"

"What kind of tone is that? I was worried about you."

Don't scream. Don't shout. Don't cry. "Why are you calling me?"

"I told you I was worried. You suddenly vanished into thin air without even finishing the game."

Stay calm. Don't raise your voice. Keep your cool. "You took too long and I had somewhere I needed to be."

He spared a glance down to Kyo who had miraculously gotten himself into a semi deep sleep like state. He still felt a bit warmer than Shinichi would have liked, and he was obviously a lot more tired than he should have been after sleeping for long amounts of time. Still, at least he was not thrashing about in misery and pain. That was an improvement at least.

"Where are you?" The voice on the phone cut through his thoughts. It sounded so concerned.

All it did was put Shinichi even more on edge. "You don't need to know that?"

"Tantei-Kun," The other said soothingly. "I didn't mean it the way it sounded."

Don't panic. Don't panic. **Don't panic**. "The answer is still the same."

"What's wrong with you? Why do you sound so odd?"

Shinichi swallowed harshly. "Nothing's wrong. You didn't need to call."

He was probably being unfair. The thief on the other end of the line had a legitimate reason to be concerned. When their shared history was taken into account, disappearing without so much as a word was **always** a reason to go into an immediate state of panic. This was especially true when Shinichi, the death magnet, was concerned. Yet, even though the detective was well aware of this, he still could not fight the agitation that arose inside of him.

These were two important parts of his world that he had desperately tried to keep separate. They were never supposed to know that the other even existed. How could they be clashing together like this so suddenly? What could he do to keep them apart?

"Tantei-Kun?"

Shinichi took a breath to calm himself. "Everything's fine and I'm going to hang up now."

"Detective, you're not making any sense. I need you to talk to me."

Shinichi was about to speak again, to try and convince the person on the other end of the line to stop making things so difficult, when, to his surprise, the phone was taken from him. Kyo, who was apparently _not_ asleep, took his head from his friend's neck and brought the phone to his ear.

"This call will now be terminated. Wake me up again, and I will not hesitate to chuck this thing out the window." That was all the warning the redhead gave before he hung up, threw the device to the floor, and returned to his earlier position.

Shinichi blinked. "I thought you were sleeping."

"You thought wrong."

He chuckled. "You might live to regret that decision. That guy can be a real pain in the ass when he wants to be."

Kyo made a 'meh' like sound and tried to shrug his shoulders. The threat did not seem to concern him. "Who was that anyway?"

Hmm, how could he answer? "A very big kid."

Kyo snorted. "What, did you forget to babysit him? Did he throw a tantrum because you didn't show up in time for bedtime?"

Shinichi chuckled softly. "Sounds about right. I broke a play date with him to come here."

"Aw, did I make the wittle kid upset? Too bad."

Shinichi tried not to laugh outright. Kyo could be so grumpy when he wasn't feeling well, and he could say the funniest of things when something annoyed him enough. It was just too funny. "I feel like I should scold you, or something of the sort."

"You should go to sleep, is what you should do."

"What kind of prize do I get if I do?" He teasingly asked.

"I won't punch you in the gut."

"Convincing enough."

* * *

**AN: Sorry if this chapter is poorly done this time around. Kyo and I have something in common today, meaning we're both sick and feeling incredibly out of our element. If there's something wrong, my apologies and I'll try to fix it when I'm feeling better. **

**Song of the Day: Romeo and Cinderella.  
**


	9. Chapter 9

Shinichi should have known. He really, really, **really** should have known better. It was rather careless of him to assume that spiting someone, especially Kid, was not going to bring him some very heavy regrets.

He might as well have just sent tabloids an embarrassing photograph of when he was four years old, running around stark naked with a towel wrapped around his neck. It would have caused him the same amount of embarrassment he was experiencing now, with the added bonus that it would have been on his terms, and he would have at least had the means to do decent damage control. Better yet, he should have had the foresight to make some kind of public service announcement, regardless of whether or not he thought something was going to blow up in his face, because he shown have known better than to think it would never come to that.

If there was anything he had learned over his years of being a detective, dealing with secrets that were not meant to be leaked, it was that you ran less a risk of telling the truth about any given situation yourself, than you did letting someone else put their own spin on the tale. Even the smaller things in life made you look like a fool if they were told in the right way, and really, **he should have known** things would have turned out this way. It always did.

No one ditched Kid right in the middle of a heist. Certainly not when the thief had invited you personally, and certainly not with the intent to see someone you verbally dubbed more important. Even if you did, you did not add insult to injury by being rude to a worried thief when he tried to contact you later on in the night, and finish off the whole ordeal by letting the 'other person' hang up on him. And if you did manage to do all of the above, you should at least try to get to the press before the thief you ignored had the chance to grab hold of a microphone. This way you could tell the world your very reasonable side of the story without getting your head chewed off by anyone's annoyingly verbose and incredibly persistent fan club.

Shinichi sighed loudly and chucked his remote down onto the floor. The carpet kept it from breaking apart into pieces, but the batteries did manage to pop out of their socket. The detective couldn't bring himself to care. Not when every news station was playing the same story over and over again, and his phone was ringing off the hook with reporters eager to know what he had to say for himself. This was one of the things he hated most about being in the public eye, and having a nemesis in that same limelight. It made anything happening between them, no matter how innocent, subject to the most scandalous observations. Meaning that Kid's pouting in disappointment at his favorite detective being absent at his latest heist, was turned into a sobbing pile of utter heartbreak at Shinichi 'deliberately leaving him so he could go find someone better to spend his time with'.

It also meant that the Kaitou Kid fan club was mad at the detective for leaving what was a supposedly 'intimate moment' between the two of them, the Hattori Heiji fan club furious at him for leaving his best friend to fend for himself, and the Saguru Hakuba fan club disgusted with him for abandoning his fellow Holmes enthusiast with such a mess. To make things **even worse**, his own fan club was far too slow in getting their bearings together in order to defend him. It left Shinichi in a very open spot, liable to be stopped at the drop of a dime, and mercilessly interrogated as if he had just become the world's most prolific serial killer.

It was driving him up a wall. Oh, sure, Kid hadn't done it on purpose. Neither had Heiji or Hakuba. This whole thing had been blown out of proportion by the media, and it really wasn't anyone's fault, except for the ones with cameras and microphones. But, despite all of that, Shinichi was still getting a lot of undeserved hate for something people kept taking out of context. The general public would forget it soon enough, Kid and the other detectives might try to apologize to him about their unintentional hands in his misery, but it was pretty damn annoying **right now**. Shinichi couldn't pick up the phone or answer the door for a good part of that week, and school had been so terrible he found himself thinking about committing a murder or two just to get some peace. The end of said week couldn't come fast enough, but people were still trying to get him to speak about what had happened. Never mind the fact that _**nothing had happened at all**_. These people were wasting their time, and taking up too much of his, for some stupid form of curiosity, and it had gotten old relatively quickly.

His cell phone rang again, and he growled as he flipped it open. He had been refusing calls for the better part of the hour, but things were getting ridiculous. Whoever was on the other end of the line was going to get quite an earful, and he wasn't going to worry about tact and censorship. "What the hell do you want?!"

He hadn't expected the laugh. "A better answering service. You kiss your mother with that mouth?"

Shinichi blinked, and after a second he let out a sigh. "Oh, it's just you Kyo."

"Just me? You don't sound too happy about that." The slightly offended voice told him.

The brunet ran a hand through his hair. "Sorry, I'm just having a bad day." In all honesty, he really was glad to hear from Kyo. The martial artist was like a breath of fresh air in a smog infested city, and the redhead was just about the only one the detective could talk to without getting ticked off right about now.

"You too?"

Shinichi immediately sat up straight, his heart jumping into his throat and threatening to suffocate him on the spot. He knew _he_ had been given the sour end of the deal in this Kid fiasco, but he thought he was the only one suffering. Had Kyo been caught up in it too? "Are you okay?" It occurred to him that he hadn't _exactly_ told Kyo who he hung up on a few days prior. Shinichi only said something about a big kid, which wasn't descriptive in and of itself. Why did he think that was a good idea at the time again? If he had told the truth, Kyo might have been better prepared. "Have you...been seeing the news recently?"

He heard an off handed hum. "Yeah, I saw a few things." There was a small moment of silence. "**When** exactly, were you going to tell me that 'big kid' equaled 'international thief', hm?"

Shinichi could have kicked himself. He should have known better than to keep secrets from this one. Kyo may not have had claims to a super-genius mind, you could get one over on him if you knew how to play his emotions well enough, but he always found out the truth. He didn't have a certain formula, or a sure fire way of tracking it down, but it always seemed to come into his possession one way or another. When it did, Kyo usually didn't pull punches with the person who lied to him, no matter how white the untruth may have been. "Uh, I was going to say something eventually." He refused the impulse to say he was sorry. If he needed to apologize later on in the conversation, he was not going to lessen its sincerity by saying it repeatedly. "Don't tell me people figured out I had gone to see you?"

"Not really." He was surprised to hear a slightly irritated, but not really angry, voice. "As of right now, I'm kind of like the unknown mistress. People know I exist, but not who I am."

Which begged the question, "Why do you sound so mad then?"

"I'm not mad at you." Kyo clarified, much to Shinichi's relief. "But Shigure hasn't stopped laughing about the damn thing since he saw it on TV. He's even threatening to make a cheesy romance book based on the two of us." Shinichi could practically see the twitch of the other's eye. "If he doesn't knock it off soon, you'll have to drag me off to prison for double homicide."

Shinichi felt an incredible need to simply laugh at all the worries ripping apart his chest. He wasn't quite sure how to name all of them in politically correct terms, but he knew each and every one of them had their place, and a common purpose meant to drive him crazy. But it hardly mattered right now. Kyo wasn't mad at him. Kid had no idea who Kyo even was. And, sure, the general public knew he was out in the world somewhere, but the important thing was that they had no specifics or suspicions that would lead them to Shigure's door. If Kyo didn't just up and strangle him, the writer would not have to deal with anything out of the ordinary because of the detective. This was...great.

"Why would that end up being a double homicide?" Shinichi asked just to get a bit of normal banter in his system. "His canine form doesn't count as a separate person."

"It'll count because I'm going to kill him, find some way to revive him, and then kill again for good measure."

This time Shinichi did laugh outright. It was all too much not to.

Kyo must have noticed that the sounds coming from Shinichi's mouth were not of genuine happiness. "How stressed did this whole thing make you, anyway? You sound like a wreck, and considering how good you are at lying to me when I don't have to see your face, that's saying something."

It was saying something else entirely that Kyo could make deductions based on nothing but brief vocal responses. "Pretty stressed, if I'm completely honest with you. This guy is something of a local celerity, and blowing him off for anyone or anything else is, apparently, something that marks me for destruction."

"Destruction? Has anybody threatened you because of this?"

Shinichi thought better mentioning the hoards of rabid fangirls waiting to tear his throat out for making their favorite thief upset. Kyo was not one to care who was talking too big, or what gender they happened to be. If someone was willing to throw a punch, the redhead was willing to break the arm attached to it."I'm just getting legally stalked is all."

"Because that sounds _so_ much better." Kyo's tone said as much. "Why is this happening exactly, and why aren't your police friends running to the rescue?"

Shinichi laughed again. "Reporters and the like are all over this story. I have no idea why, but you know the media likes to make their facts up. The police can't do much." Well, they might have been able to do something, but Shinichi didn't want his pride to be any more compromised than it already was by trying to talk to them about this situation. He could handle things on his own just fine. He hoped.

Kyo hummed. "Doesn't give them any right to follow you around and annoy the hell out of you. How is a guy supposed to breathe with something like this hanging over his head? Have you even been going to school?"

"I didn't have much of a choice in that department."

"You've probably been sneaking in and out."

He had been. "What can you do?"

"Take a small vacation. We have a few days off this next week, don't we?"

Shinichi did, but he hadn't been aware that the same could be said for those living in the Sohma household. "I do." There was just one thing wrong with taking an unexpected vacation. "I don't intend to get any rest though. Two Kid heists are planned, one right after the other, and this time I'm fully expected to attend."

"Do you **have** to be there?"

Shinichi furrowed his brow. "What do you mean **have** to? Am I being forced to, you mean?"

"I mean, is anything bad going to happen to your careers, professional or academic, if you don't show up?"

"Not that I'm aware of."

"Good. Come stay over at my place."

Shinichi blinked. "But...I said...I told you..."

"Am I going to get a full sentence?"

As soon as the detective could remember how to form one, he was. "The Kid heists. I'm supposed to go."

"But you don't have to?"

"...no."

"And do you even want to?"

"...no I don't. I really don't."

When Kyo spoke again, he sounded a bit smug. "So why not go to a place where you actually get to enjoy yourself, with a guy who's a hell of a lot more fun than Kid, if I do say so myself. And, in fact, I am going to say it. I'm better company than Kid, so why not come see me?"

Shinichi not only did not have an argument, he didn't even want to think of one.

"If you're worried about people harassing you on the way, I could come and get you from Beika. I still remember where your house is, since you told me you're still living at the same place, and I doubt your little stalkers want to have a run in with me."

The offer was tempting but it was a bad idea. If anyone caught sight of Kyo now, the proverbial jig would be up. "I can get there on my own. I've been sneaking around all week anyway. One more covert trip isn't going to make much of a difference."

Kyo gave an amused chuckle. "Whatever."

"I guess I'll see you soon then." He couldn't stop the smile, and he couldn't keep the happiness from his voice.

Kyo found great satisfaction in this. "That's what I like to hear. And bring some extra blankets with you! If you're going to be hogging my bed, the least you could do is make sure we can both be warm."

And that was the beginning. That one phone call was all it really took to change everything. Shinichi took every free moment he had and spent it at Shigure's house, and Kyo never failed to bring up some emergency the detective had to take care of right away. Especially when there was a Kid heist scheduled. As far as the martial artist was concerned, he was in a battle against the thief for his best friend's attention. Kyo did not back down from a match, and he had only ever lost to one person when it really mattered. He wasn't about to make a habit out of it.

Shinichi didn't feel the need to say anything about it. A part of him was flattered that he was the one being fought over, as opposed to him doing the fighting for someone else's benefit. And, honestly, if he was going to have someone fight for him, he was glad Kyo was the one stepping up to the plate. The arrangements made didn't bother him, and he liked spending time over at the Sohma house. It wasn't as empty as his was, and he had good food with good company coupled with a warm bed and a wonderful roommate. He didn't have anything to complain about. He didn't think it was a problem.

So, naturally, it quickly became a problem.

* * *

**AN: I don't want to promise anything because of how this thing has shifted from what I wanted in the past, but I think some rivals are going to end up meeting each other come next chapter.**


End file.
